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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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April 12, 2021: Mrs. Doubtfire (1992) (Recap)

Hey, Robin Williams. Been a while.

I’m sorry that I haven’t watched your movies for a while, and that I always skip your comedy stand-up when my phone’s on shuffle. I just...let me explain. Since I was a kid, you were one of my favorite entertainers. That might as well have started the day I was born, because...well, we share a birthday, fun fact. But it definitely continued with the first movie I ever saw in theatres.

While I don’t quite remember the first time I saw it, Aladdin was one of my favorite childhood movies, and I knew that you were the voice of the Genie from an early age. You might have actually been the first actor I ever knew by name. Which makes sense, because your stardom during the ‘90s was nearly unparalleled.

The next film I remember seeing (and hearing) you in was Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. That also starred Tim Curry, who would also be a major figure of my childhood. It also wasn’t the best movie, in hindsight, but it is the only time I’ve heard you rap since.

But eventually, I watched your forays into live-action, too. Jumanji, Hook, even the objectively bad Flubber, are all movies that I vividly remember watching during childhood. I was really excited for Flubber, even, and I LOVED Jumanji growing up. I liked Hook, too, but I appreciated that more as I got older.

Of course, during this time period, you also made less family-friendly films. The Fisher King, Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society, Good Morning Vietnam, and What Dreams May Come were all very successful, and cemented your reputation as an actor. I also haven’t seen any of them. In fact...I don’t think I’ve seen any of your dramatic roles, and that’s something that I’ll fix this year. Hell, in a few days, I’ll watch The Birdcage, another of your big hits of the ‘90s.

But why haven’t I seen them up to now? Well...I was going to watch these films, about seven years ago. But...I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. Because it hurts. A lot.

I know that this is a downer, but my relationship with Robin Williams today is tainted by his tragic death. I was fucking BROKEN when his death was announced, and I really haven’t been able to watch him since. I’ve seen Aladdin recently, but that’s about all I could stand to watch. I mean, the guy shares a birthday with me! I’ve always loved his comedy stylings, and his improvisational skills are something I’ve internalized to a certain degree.

So, yeah. This one’s tough. But, it’s about time I moved on, and celebrated the man’s career for what it was: stellar. And that also brings up an important question, that some of you have probably asked by now:

HOW HAVE I MISSED MRS. DOUBTFIRE, WHAT THE FUCK

I KNOW I KNOW OK?

Look, I’m not entirely sure how I haven’t seen this movie, because I’m MORE than aware of it! I remember it airing during the ‘90s, my Dad AND girlfriend love this movie, and I know FOR A FACT that my family owned both the DVD AND THE VHS of this movie! So, how? HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN IT BY NOW?

I honestly have no idea, but let’s fix it now, huh? Yet one more man-dresses-as-woman movie this month! And no, I am not watching White Chicks...because I’ve already seen White Chicks. Also, it’s...problematic.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) is a voice-actor, and a good one. Which, given that it’s Robin Williams, isn’t entirely inaccurate. He’s also a voice actor with a spine, as he morally objects to a scene in the cartoon that he’s performing for, in which the main character smokes. By the way, I’m 99% sure that this cartoon is animated by Chuck Jones, and it looks well-made.

Anyway, this leads to him quitting the cartoon altogether, and allows him to pick up his kids early from school. These kids are Lydia (Lisa Hykub), Chris (Matthew Lawrence), and Natalie (Mara Wilson), and it’s Chris’ 12th birthday. Daniel arranges a...surprisingly large party, given that it’s completely impromptu, and it comes with a petting zoo and complete trappings. However, it’s not a party of which his wife will approve.

This wife is Miranda (Sally Field), a successful architect and the breadwinner of the family. After getting a call from the neighbor about the party, she comes home and busts the outrageous party. And for the record, I’m entirely on Miranda’s side here. This party is INSANE, and very irresponsible, given the fact that Daniel currently has no job. And yeah, he’s a very loving father, and a good person, but...it’s too much.

Miranda feels the same, and after 14 years of frustration, she realizes that she no longer loves Daniel. In a genuinely sad scene, she tells him that she wants a divorce. And she goes through with it MUCH to Daniel’s detriment. He has no home, as he’s staying with his brother, Frank (Harvey Fierstein) and his partner Jack (Scott Capurro). He also still has no job, meaning that he has no way to provide for his children. This means that he has no ability to provide, and the judge awards Miranda full custody. Oof.

However, this is a conditional arrangement, as another hearing for joint custody will be held in 3 months, and if Daniel can get a home and job in that time, he has a chance. He performs a litany of voices and impressions with his court liason, Mrs. Sellner (Anne Haney), which amuses me, but not her, and he gets a job in order to be with his kids for more than one day a week.

Meanwhile, Miranda IMMEDIATELY starts dating fellow designer and old flame Stuart Dunmeyer (Pierce Brosnan), like, almost before Daniel leaves the house. He bids a heartfelt goodbye to his kids, with the promise that he’ll see them on Saturdays. And now begins the absolute hatred and petty bitchiness of Daniel and Miranda! Seriously, it’s...it’s fucking terrible, and it takes away from my sympathy from either side. I get that divorce is rough and ugly, but GODDAMN, neither of them perform the act with any form of tact or grace.

This is put on display during the kids’ visitation to Daniel’s semi-crappy new apartment, which doesn’t even seem that bad, to be honest. Miranda dropped them off late and picked them up early, as if to slowly starve Daniel of time with his kids, which is extraordinarily shitty of her, fuck me. Daniel’s not taking it well, understandably, but then does something...really dumb, when you think about it.

See, Miranda’s looking for a nanny, to help watch the kids and clean the house during the week. Daniel volunteers his services, which is actually a good idea, but Miranda says she’ll think about it, which we ALL know means no. I DO NOT like Miranda, even if I understand the initial reasons for the divorce. She’s being especially spiteful, and it’s not a good look.

Daniel’s stupid idea, though, is to change the phone number on the ad for the nanny, which Miranda shows him before she takes the kids. Instead, he calls her number, and pretends to be various terrible applicants, until finally supplying his own applicant: the completely fictional Euphegenia Doubtfire (Daniel Hillard).

Daniel plays Mrs. Doubtfire as an elderly British woman, and a seasoned nanny in her day. Which is why it’s weird to me that, when he does to Frank and Jack to help him make an elaborate disguise as Mrs. Doubtfire, that they go through various other impressions and get-ups. Which, yes, is goddamn hilarious, but also makes NO SENSE, given that they’ve already established her character to Miranda. Funny, but nonsensical.

But, regardless, Euphegenis Doubtfire comes into being, and introduces herself to Miranda and the kids. Mrs. Doubtfire is exactly what Miranda’s looking for, although the kids aren’t exactly overjoyed, ESPECIALLY the oldest, Lydia. Also, during this first meeting, Miranda openly bad-mouths Daniel in front of the kids, in just the WORST fuckin’ way. I genuinely dislike Miranda A LOT. Again, the divorce was certainly justified, but I REALLY don’t like her. Daniel loves his kids, and they’re HIS kids, TOO. Stop using them as weapons against him, OOOOOOOOOOOH I DON’T LIKE MIRANDA

Anyway, that evening, after she’s officially been hired by Miranda, Mrs. Doubtfire heads home, only to find court liason Mrs. Sellner waiting to speak with Daniel. After a litany of puns, and a humorous changing scene, Daniel accidentally throws the Mrs. Doubtfire mask out of the window, and is forced to improvise through equally humorous circumstances. Hence, the above meringue mask scene. Has anybody tried that, by the way? Could that work as a groundbreaking beauty technique? Or would the sugar just feed the skin bacteria and give you acne? Genuinely curious.

Now going between his job as Daniel and the nanny job as Doubtfire, Daniel’s not doing too badly for himself. The nanny job begins, and Mrs. Doubtfire IMMEDIATELY contrasts with Daniel, creating a disciplinarian atmosphere in place of Daniel’s formerly loosey-goosey attitude. Which is interesting, and it works! I mean, it’s not how I would parent, but it does work. Doubtfire makes the kids to their homework, rather than watch TV, and then attempts to make dinner. Instead, though, the dinner’s ruined, and Daniel orders takeout and makes it LOOK like homemade food. And it looks good, too! Daniel’s full of hidden talents.

After dinner, as Mrs. Doubtfire’s leaving, Lydia apologizes for backtalking her earlier, and thanks her for making her mom happy with everything she did that evening. he also says that she’s still a bit messed up about her dad being gone. And yeah, it’s sweet-but-sad.

Going forward (and in a montage set to Aerosmith’s Dude Looks Like a Lady), Mrs. Doubtfire takes care of the family, and Daniel even betters himself to become a better Mrs. Doubtfire. Which...to be honest, Daniel REALLY should’ve done this before. I get that he needed the pressure of losing the kids to do this, but...look, Daniel really wasn’t that responsible of a parent, and the fact that THIS is how he learns to be so is...not great. Like, here’s an example, OK: take Donald Trump.

Yeah, I know, what’s this politics doing in my peanut butter? And WOW, that reference is older than me, but anyway. Let’s say that, in two years, a new politician comes on the scene, and her name is Karyn Walldottir. She has somewhat centrist views, and behaves in a way that’s inclusive to the majority, and backs up her claims and promises with evidence (at least true enough for us to suspend our disbelief). This is, of course, Donald Trump disguised as a woman in order to gain custody of the United States of America again. Naturally.

Karyn Walldottir gets elected in 2024, and all of her policies are markedly different from Trump’s and Biden’s, but leaning closer to Biden in progressive standpoints (assuming that that worked for him come 2024). While Trump is doing this specifically to be president again, he ends up revising his personal policies, and being a better person and president for the country. A literal impossibility, I know. But suspend your disbelief to ask this question:

WHY THE FUCK WOULDN’T HE DO THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE? IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!

OK, now that that dumbass (and mildly horrifying) thought process is concluded, let’s get back to Mrs. Doubtfire. In the process of Mrs. Doubtfire’s ingratiation with the family, Miranda’s been dating Stu, whom Mrs. Doubtfire subtly insults when they meet. And yeah, Daniel’s being a little petty here, but it makes a bit of sense at least.

That night, after an accidental intrusion by Chris when Mrs. Doubtfire is going to the bathroom, Daniel’s basically forced to tell Chris and Lydia his little secret, which Lydia’s happy about, but Chris is understandably weirded out about. But, they agree to keep the secret from their mom and younger sister.

At his OTHER job, delivering film reels from a TV station, he witnesses the filming of an extremely boring kids educational TV show, and comments as such to another man watching. As he quickly learns, this is the owner of the station, Jonathan Lundy (Robert Prosky), on whom Daniel makes a good impression.

In the meantime, Mrs. Doubtfire has a talk with Miranda about their love lives, real and fictional. Daniel realizes how badly Miranda had been suffering in their marriage, which she never told him because...well, he never seemed to take anything seriously. Which is entirely fair...but this is why Miranda’s a tricky-ass character. She’s got two sides: there’s the justified caring mother and strong woman, and there’s the PETTY ASSHOLE who genuinely doesn’t care about Daniel or his feelings AT ALL. Jesus.

And Stu...look, Stu is LITERALLY a Gary Stu, who’s mostly perfect. Sure, he’s not always been that way, but he definitely is now! He’s responsible, wealthy, in love with Miranda AND her kids. And yeah, at a country club that he’s a member of (OF COURSE he is), he privately badmouth Daniel in front of Mrs. Doubtfire, calling him a loser, and...yeah, he’s not really unjustified in that statement. Fact of the matter is, Stu is barely even a plot device.

Meanwhile, in Daniel’s day job, he finds himself alone in the studio, where the toy dinosaurs from the TV show are still sitting on the table. He plays with them, gives them voices, sings some songs, and impresses Mr. Lundy, who’s there in the shadows after all that. He’s impressed, and invites Daniel to dinner to talk about a potential future show at the network.

But then, it’s also Miranda’s birthday coming up, and Stu’s holding a dinner for her, to which Mrs. Doubtfire is invited. Trouble is, it’s at the OH FUCK IT. YOU know what this is. It’s at the same time and place as the Mr. Lund meeting yaddayaddayadda LOOK. We ALL know how this is going to end. It’s the GODDAMN LIAR REVEALED TROPE AGAIN. And here’s the thing:

I FUGGIN’ HAAAAAATE THE LIAR REVEALED TROPE

You know, that thing in movies (especially family movies of the ‘90s) where somebody starts off a situation with a lie, they get deeper and deeper into that lie, grow close to people under false pretenses, and then OH NO! THE LIAR IS REVEALED! And everybody’s angry and/or sad, the liar slumps off, defeated and broken, but then realizes the error of his ways, while everybody else realizes the same thing, and he comes back to vindicate himself, and is welcomed back with open arms. And it introduces unneeded tension AND I HAVE ALWAYS FUCKING HATED IT.

Let’s list the examples, shall we? A Bug’s Life, Aladdin, Mulan, The Road to El Dorado, Chicken Run, How to Train Your Dragon, Klaus, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Megamind (SUBVERSIVE MY ASS), Over the Hedge, Rango, Toy Story, Steven Universe (the whole Pearl/Sardonyx arc, which went on for WAY too long), the list goes on and fucking on. And I GODDAMN HATE IT. Not to say it can’t be done well. Disney actually usually does a pretty good job with it, and Dreamworks uses it A LOT, but almost always pretty well. But sometimes...GOD. Either way, it’s still used FAR too fucking much. And look. Here’s another one. Joy.

Look, at this point...I will freely admit that I'm biased against this trope, but it’s also obvious where this is headed. Basically, Daniel switches back and forth between the dinner with the family, and the dinner with Mr. Lundy. With Mr. Lundy, he gets absolutely SMASHED. Great. Great decision, Daniel.

So, yeah, Mrs. Doubtfire’s also smashed, which is pretty goddamn apparent to them all. At this point, I’m wondering why Daniel, as Mrs. Doubtfire, didn’t just say she was sick as hell, and had to go home. Or, considering the fact that Daniel proposes her as a show idea regardless, the switch wasn’t even necessary! And that means that none of what’s about to happen, happens. Or, here’s a crazy thought, maybe Daniel shouldn’t have POISONED STU’S FOOD WITH CAYENNE PEPPER THAT HE’S ALLERGIC TO!

YEAH! Because that causes Stu to go into anaphylactic shock for a hot sec, causing him to choke. Mrs. Doubtfire does the right thing and gives him the Heimlich maneuver, and in the process, SURPRISE! IT’S BEEN DANIEL ALL ALONG! BUH BUH BUHHHHH DA DA DA DAAAAA DA

Yeah, so Miranda is understandably ENRAGED by this revelation, and it’s all over. Daniel represents himself in court at the custody hearing, but the judge deems his “lifestyle” dangerous for children. Which...yikes, Judge, that statement didn’t age well AT FUCKING ALL. But, given Daniel’s admitted stupidity with this whole idea, he’s not wrong about the dangerous part. But, I have to say, Daniel’s speech in his own defense is nice...although he also says he’s addicted to his children, so let’s throw a second yikes on there for good measure.

The speech moves Miranda...but not enough to prevent Daniel has his custody stripped away from him! GOD THEY BOTH SUUUUUUUUCK. Daniel’s a broken man, and Miranda and the kids are similarly broken without him and Mrs. Doubtfire. However...Daniel’s career isn’t broken AT ALL, as Mrs. Doubtfire is now a kid’s show host! Yeah! And she’s a hit! And again, it brings me to wonder why Daniel DIDN’T APPLY HIS OBVIOUS TALENTS LIKE THIS IN THE FIRST GODDAMN PLACE

Realizing that she made a mistake, she goes to the set during the filming of a show. She congratulates him on the show, and he replies by stating how broken he is now! Thanks, Miranda! Well, after an argument, and after Miranda sees how badly she’s messed up someone she used to care for, they come to an agreement: joint custody. FINALLY GODDAMN IT

And good, because I don’t want them back together. I have to give this film props for that: they acknowledge that these two are NOT good for each other, and they deliver a message in the end: families are families, no matter how they’re shaped. One mom, one dad, uncle or aunt, grandparents, adoption, two separated or divorced parents...oh, also, two dads or two moms. Yeah, that isn’t said in Mrs. Doubtfire’s final monologue, which is odd considering Daniel’s brother and his life partner...but it’s also kid’s TV in the ‘90s, so I guess that sadly makes sense. And with that, and their new family arrangement, Daniel takes his kids on an afternoon out, as himself.

...Look. That’s Mrs. Doubtfire, yaddayaddayadda LOOK. I don’t dislike this movie. In fact, here: have this mini-Review:

Cast and Acting - 9/10: Good, although Brosnan was a little stiff.

Plot and Writing - 5/10: It’s an idiot plot, what can I say? It’s actually based off of a book, which was a surprise to me, but it was adapted by Randi Mayem Singer and Leslie Dixon, and...eh. Still an idiot plot.

Directing and Cinematography - 8/10: It’s Chris Columbus, you get what you get. Definitely has that Home Alone flair to it.

Production and Art Design - 8/10: I mean, yeah, the Doubtfire disguise was good most of the time, but...I dunno, I could still tell it was Robin. But, still, it was good. Took 4 hours of makeup, fun fact.

Music and Editing - 8/10: Music by Howard Shore (ooh, Howard Shore!) was pretty nice, especially the ending theme. Editing by Raja Gosnell was...RAJA GOSNELL???

OH GOD. Yeah, OK, I see what happened here. Also, I didn’t know he was an editor! I just know him as the director of the Scooby-Doo films, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, The Smurfs films, Big Momma’s...

...OK, no, I am not doing Big Momma’s House OR the Madea movies. THE TROPE-BUCK STOPS HERE! I am moving on to something else! But, of course, I have to sum this up in a Review. See you there!

#mrs. doubtfire #mrs doubtfire #chris columbus #robin williams #sally field #pierce brosnan #harvey fierstein #robert prosky #mara wilson #comedy april #user365 #365days365movies #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #moviegifs

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evil--isnt--born · 8 years ago

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Bleeding Hearts

Summary: Emma Swan has spent a decade killing the soulmates of those willing to pay for immortality, but being suddenly given a partner makes her question whether her life is now the one on the line -- either at the hands of her uncompromising boss, or at the hands of a stranger magic altogether.

also on ff.net and ao3

Big thanks to @nowforruin for stepping up to the plate on a rather last minute beta job (my fault) and for the excellent suggestions that got this where it needed to be.

I think I’d need another 18k to adequately describe how grateful I am to have @nightships in my life, but in the absence of that, let me just say that it has been an utter treat to get to write something for such a wonderful friend, talented writer, and birthday twin. Thank you for inspiring me on the daily to be a better writer and overall human being, and for giving me a reason to write about romance and murder. Happy Birthmas 2.0, fandom soulmate. I promise not to kill you.

The worst part was that they always looked happy.

Even through the scope of her gun, and even alone without their soulmates beside them, her targets all had that same sense of peace and belonging that practically made their skin glow from the inside out. If she caught herself at the right moment she could use that, sink deep into the part of herself that didn’t believe in love or happy endings, and breathe in bitterness until what she had to do became bearable.

Either that, or she reminded herself of everything that was at stake -- and of how far the man she worked for was willing to go to keep her locked in this bargain of theirs -- and did it.

She took a breath and focused on her target, let everything around her fall away until the wind whipping across the rooftop was nothing more than white noise, and the insistent twinge deep in her chest that she shouldn’t be doing this could be ignored.

She squeezed the trigger and of course she hit her mark -- one hit between the eyes, quick and clean and as painless as a shot to the head could ever be. She didn’t stick around to watch the aftermath, swiftly disassembling the long gun and packing it into the false back of an unremarkable backpack with practiced ease. She was off the roof in minutes, out the back door of the building, onto a side street, and walking calmly away from the scene as though she didn’t know what was unfolding on the other side of the building, as if she had had no part in it whatsoever.

It was a cold comfort, as she walked away with no one the wiser, to know that Emma Swan was very, very good at what she did.

-------

“Put it on the board,” Emma said, stopping unceremoniously in front of a large, carved wooden desk and staring down the short man seated behind it. “It’s done. Come on.”

“Impatient, aren’t we?” The look he gave her was all flat lips and hard eyes, stern words she knew too well sitting just behind them, but he stood nonetheless, leading the way to a large chalkboard taking up the entirety of one wall. It was full of numbers, a cryptic but extraordinarily detailed log of every deal he had ever made with people like her, and of how long he owned them for. He stopped by one numbered row -- not the first on the list by a long shot, but one Emma knew well. Her number, her row, her kill count, her debt written in clear numbers that he rubbed out and then rewrote, the figure dropping by nowhere near enough. But it would do for now. It had to. “Happy, dearie?”

“Thrilled.” She took the second warning glance without comment and followed him back to the desk, lingering without taking her eyes off him until he slid open the top drawer and tossed two plain white envelopes on the surface between them. She grabbed them both, nodding once in a warped version of respect before turning and striding from the room in the direction of the elevator without another word from him. Without glancing back she knew he wasn’t even looking at her, their business done. He had always kept things brief and only said what he needed to -- it was perhaps the only thing she liked about Robert Gold.

She stuffed the envelopes in her back pocket as she crossed the office building’s expansive and ridiculous marble lobby to exit onto a bustling street. For so long she had paused just outside the door of this beautiful building and wondered how the people who came through it every day, the occupants of every other office, even the people walking by on the street, could stay so ignorant of the man who took up the very top floor and the kind of business he dealt in. But she had been in it too long now to marvel at Gold’s low profile, so she simply melted into the crowd without a backwards glance as she made her way home.

-------

Emma waited until she was full of microwaved macaroni and cheese and three glasses deep in a bottle of wine before snatching the two envelopes from where she had dropped them on the coffee table an hour earlier. She opened the easy one first, the one fat with her cut of the last job, the percentage that didn’t go towards repaying everything Gold told her she owed him. The prices he charged for his services -- her services -- were exorbitant, but they were no more than a sliver of the price he put on lives that needed saving. So while she only took a slim cut of everything she brought in and lived in a glorified closet in a part of town that wouldn’t have been safe if she didn’t have a small armoury hidden under her bed, she was still so indebted she could barely see the end of it even if she did have several lifetimes to get there.

She had worked for Gold for the last decade, but his business had been going on longer than she’d been alive. Everyone in the world had a soulmate, and she didn’t know how or why, but somehow the universe had seen fit to make it so that everyone found that soulmate eventually, no matter how many years it took. You froze at twenty, stopped aging for ten or twenty or a hundred years until you found the person meant for you, and started aging alongside them so you could grow old together. In theory, it was beautiful. In practice, it meant that people like Gold could charge a premium to whoever was willing to pay to take out their soulmates, stall their aging again, and live on until the universe presented them with another meant-to-be. And then do the same thing again and again and again, immortal until they ran out of money.

The second of the two envelopes was harder, it always was, and as Emma opened the flap she thought that she should have finished the bottle of wine before diving into this one. Sometimes she dreamed of taking a break like she knew some of the others did, doing one job and taking her cut and disappearing for a month before coming back for another, remembering what being a person felt like instead of just being a gun for hire. But then she thought about that figure on the board, the dent she barely made in it even doing jobs back to back year after year, and remembered why she didn’t get days off. It had been her own naivety that had gotten her here, and she would bear the cost of it for however long it took.

She upended the envelope with a sigh, two photos and a folded sheet of paper falling out onto the couch. She ignored the letter because the basic target details were always the same, but the photos caught her eye. It wasn’t often that she got two targets at once, but it had happened before and it usually meant that the hit was even more personal than usual -- a key to immortality and a giant Fuck You to the couple all at once. It also meant that the price was higher and therefore her cut was higher, so while she hated jobs on couples, it wasn’t one she could turn down.

The first photo was of a woman, dark haired with the beginnings of laugh lines around her eyes. Emma swallowed heavily -- the ones who had aged were always harder. Somehow, knowing they’d had love long enough for it to show on their faces made taking it away hurt more even though the endgame was always the same. She picked up the second photo reluctantly, but when she saw the man, she had to look three times before she allowed herself to believe what she was looking at.

He was young. Or looked it, at least. The woman looked thirty, but the man looked twenty. Unless this woman had found and lost an earlier version of her soulmate before meeting the man in the picture, he wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t his. So why...

Emma opened the letter quickly, but all she saw were the usual details, except --

It didn’t make any sense, but there were only details for one of the people. For the woman. Emma flipped the letter over but the back was blank, so she flipped over the woman’s photo. Her first hint that something was well and truly off was that Gold’s writing spelled out Your Target on the back.

What cemented it was the scrawl on the back of the man’s photo: a time and date two days away, a location, and the words Your Partner.

-------

When Emma had been young and stupid, she had thought that soulmate magic would make everyone happy, getting to stick around until you found the person meant for you and getting to live the rest of your life together. But it took maybe a month of working for Gold for her to realize how much people were willing to pay to take their soulmates out of the picture, to get to live forever on a loophole the universe had unknowingly given them. She saw them all: the men who looked young but had money built up over decades paying to wipe out the soulmate they had just found; the forty- and fifty- and sixty-year old women who aged a little more every time soulmate after soulmate crossed their path, and who kept paying to make soulmate after soulmate disappear; and the classic vindictive hits on men and women alike who were unfortunate enough to be not-meant-to-be with a person who couldn’t handle the truth. They all paid for hits, and Emma carried them all out without argument, but always alone.

Except for once.

She’d had a partner once, another one of Gold’s people he had paired her with early in her tenure on a hit that was too big to trust her with alone. Or so he had said. She had worked with Neal on half a dozen hits before the big one, and she actually had been twenty then, and stupid. So, so stupid to believe that a good working relationship meant something more, that even though she wasn’t aging there was something between them. And he had led her on, let her believe she was someone to him, danced his fingers along her skin while they waited for clear shots and opportunities, and whispered things into her ear that she wanted to cut his tongue out for when she thought of them now. Despite the undeniable existence of soulmates, she had never really believed in love, at least not for herself, but he had gotten her closer to believing. Until the night he had pulled out a handgun on a hit and pressed it to her temple, told her it had been a test of her instincts and that she -- fatally -- hadn’t even seen it coming. It stung more than she let herself remember even now, but though she hadn’t said a word back, the quick draw of her own weapon and survival-driven, hesitationless shot told him clearly enough that he was an asshole, and he had been wrong about her.

It was that memory that had her sitting in a booth tucked in the corner of a nondescript bar half an hour before she was supposed to meet this supposed partner, two guns and a knife tucked away underneath her red leather jacket. Carrying around weapons was usually too much of a liability to bother with outside of hits, but she could still feel the ghost of warm fingers dancing across her skin, betrayal trailing in their wake. If this partner tried to lay as much as a gentle finger on her, if she caught a bare whiff of a trap, she was going to cut off his hand.

The door of the bar blew open with a gust of cool evening air, and with it came her partner. She recognized him instantly, the dark hair and sharp jawline, the swagger that fit perfectly with assassin. His eyes swept the bar efficiently, settling on her quickly. He strode over without hesitation, sliding into the seat opposite her and saying without preamble, “You’re early.”

This close, only feet away from her in a leather jacket and jeans, he looked dangerous and God, hot. But she didn’t let any of that show, simply arching an eyebrow.

“Do I know you?” she asked, eliciting a chuckle from him.

“You can save the act, but I like the poker face.” He leaned in closer, flashing a charming, painfully curated smile. “Nobody sits in the back booths of bars except for murderers and adulterers. Alas, I’m the only man here worth adulturing with, and I just arrived. Also…” He reached into his jacket pocket and slapped a familiar square of paper on the table, turning it around so she could see her own face smiling back at her. A picture she didn’t doubt had Gold’s writing on the back of it the same as the picture of him she had in her pocket. “I know your face.”

She fought a grimace at the picture. It was an old shot that had been taken before she had started working for Gold, and though her face hadn’t changed, there was something in her eyes that the past decade had erased. She hated that this was his first impression of her, but she bit back her frustration and just levelled him a frank and serious look.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, because his photo had been his face, Gold’s writing, and nothing else. She had tried to find out who he was, of course, but had come up against the endless walls of nothing she knew he would have encountered if he looked into her, too. The sheer lack of any trace was a calling card for Gold’s people, but that didn’t mean much -- a lot of people worked for Gold, and this man’s employer was the least of Emma’s concerns.

“Your partner,” he said with a wicked twist of a smile. She had to roll her eyes at that, the self-satisfied grin and the knowing glint in his eyes that said you should be impressed.

“I’m not giving out gold stars for information I already know.”

“Good thing, because I like a challenge.” His eyes sparkled, and he held her gaze even as he pointed to her drink and held up one finger to the bartender. “What’s your name, Challenge?”

“Oh, as if,” she shot back, fighting the urge to roll her eyes a second time. “I got here first. You tell me yours.”

“We’re going to get to know each other eventually if we’re to work together. Why delay the inevitable?”

She just arched a brow and let the hypocrisy sink in for a moment. His eyes were still locked with hers, a hint of a challenge there, and she almost wanted him to start something -- wanted him to test her and see just how little she was willing to compromise.

After a long moment, though, he dropped his gaze to the table with a frustrated sigh, and her lips curled in a smile.

“Killian Jones,” he said, holding a hand across the table. She didn’t know him, but she hadn’t expected to. “At your service. Now you.”

“You don’t waste any time,” she muttered, ignoring his hand and taking a sip of her drink. His eyes tracked the movement, navy blue with something simmering beneath the surface that warned against teasing him, warned against stalling when he had kept up his end of the bargain. She could see how he and Gold, who was a stickler for a deal if he was anything, got along. But she supposed he had been a good sport, so she caught his gaze when she set her glass down and nodded once in lieu of the handshake. “Emma.”

“Emma what?”

She just shrugged and bit back a grin at the muscle jumping in his jaw and the frustration plain on his face. They had a target to discuss, and she didn’t make it a habit of being seen anywhere with any of Gold’s people for longer than was ever necessary, so she really shouldn’t have been wasting her time baiting him. But it was so, so easy to get under his skin, and if he was angry maybe he would be less careful with his words. Maybe he would admit what she already knew -- that partner jobs were never a reality unless they were traps for one half of the team. Since that first time, she had never stopped looking for the next test, and if Gold thought that blue eyes and a leather jacket would disguise it when it came, he didn’t know her well at all.

Killian had just opened his mouth to reply when the waitress came by with his drink. A pleasant smile slid onto his face so fast Emma would have almost forgotten his stormy expression from moments ago if she didn't know as well as he did the value of a good cover. The charming grin was so natural, though, and fit his features so perfectly that despite herself, Emma almost forgot how false even the best covers were. He busied himself with his drink while the woman walked away and Emma fell into the routine too, sipping her own drink and then launching into the start of a story about a fake pair of mutual friends until there was nobody in earshot. Before she could cut herself off, Killian did it for her, leaning in slightly and pulling her focus back to him, to the discussion that nobody in this bar would believe they were having even if they overheard it themselves.

“If you’re not going to work with me,” he said quietly, “then that’s up to you. But let me tell you something about Gold: if you screw up this hit because you want it to be the Emma show, he will end you. And me. And I’m not about to let that happen just because you refuse to cooperate. Is that clear?”

For a second she was frozen, just staring at him in disbelief because...no. No, he was not sitting here trying to educate her on what Gold was and wasn’t willing to do to them. No, he was not telling her she was the only reason they would fail. Her blood turned cold in her veins, and she could feel her expression turn a precise sort of calm that only looked calm until it was on top of you.

“Let me,” she said, voice even quieter than his, "tell you about Gold. He doesn’t do partners. Not ever. Not unless he thinks someone,” and at this she looked very pointedly at Killian, “isn’t doing their job, or isn’t doing it right, or is becoming too much of a liability to trust alone. He only assigns partners to walk someone to a six foot hole in the ground.”

“And how do you know I’m not the one walking you?”

“Oh please.” It was almost laughable to think Gold would give her that much of a chance. Yes, Killian was probably a test of her performance or her loyalty, but he wasn't an escort to her own death. Especially after the last time, Gold knew better than that. And so did Emma. "If that was his game, I'd already be dead."

Killian's gaze turned sharp, and tellingly so. He clearly knew Gold well enough to not only think he could school Emma on the man, but also to know how little Gold liked losing investments. Investments in people -- in trained killers -- most of all. Emma knew he could hear the certainty in her voice, though, and was smart enough to know that there was a history behind it to make her so sure that the rules which applied to everyone else didn't apply to her. She was Gold's biggest liability, and investment or not, it was no surprise how far he'd go to keep her from becoming a problem.

"Have you considered," Killian said finally, "that he has reasons for assigning partner hits he's just not told any of us about? That she" -- the target Emma assumed he had gotten the same information about as she had -- "is just particularly important? Or dangerous?"

She wondered who Killian was, that he could believe such a thing of their boss who he had to know was never as up front as he seemed.

"If you believe that," Emma said more gently than she would have thought possible, "then I can see why he's paired us up."

Killian put it all together instantly, her words and what she had already said about death, her certainty that she wasn't the one on the chopping block. He scowled at her and slapped a second photo on the table, shielding it casually with a leather-clad arm from any potential roving eyes. She was surprised he didn't walk away, but if he was a professional, she supposed worse things had put that storm in his eyes than just her saying something he already knew.

"How about we just work," he said. "We've a little over two weeks from the information I received, presuming you don't bite my head off first."

"Work it is." She ignored the biting comment for now, simply relieved that they were finally getting to the thing she was good at. What he said was exactly in line with the information that had accompanied the photo she had been given, and even though it sounded long, in their line of work two weeks was nothing at all. "Tell me what you know."

-------

What he knew ended up being exactly what she knew, which was not much. Emma wasn’t sure whether it was a coincidence or whether their target actually was someone -- or whether a thoroughly anonymous target was part of whatever Gold was trying to achieve with this partnership. She and Killian had spent an hour nursing drinks and figuring out what ground had been covered already, and though they had apparently looked into the same things and asked the same questions, they had both come up with the same nothing. So he had proposed a stakeout the next night -- proposed it right as she had opened her mouth to do the same, and she contemplated pinning his hand to the table with a straw through the palm because he gave her the cockiest smirk.

He left first, and she could see his profession in the lines of his body as he slipped smoothly between people at the bar. He had that same look on his face, though, as he pivoted to face her one last time before disappearing out the door, and she only put it all together when she lifted a coaster to wedge a bill underneath to cover her drinks and realized he already had.

Bastard.

Emma had agreed to the stakeout because it made sense, but nothing about this supposed partnership said she couldn’t get ahead in the meantime. The information Gold had given them both about their target had included a home address, and being parked in front of it for the last hour with no sign of the woman had given Emma a lot of time to stew about her so-called partner. Between the smirk and the leather and the eyes that said to forget everything else, between the cocky way he had introduced himself and the better-than-you certainty with which he had tried to educate her about a man she knew all too well, Killian Jones was trouble, and Emma knew it. But what she didn’t know, despite an entire evening and the last hour thinking about it, was what Gold was after with the man. Emma hadn’t been lying -- if Gold had any reason not to trust her, she’d already be gone. But if it was a capability problem he was getting at, she was going to make him eat his words. Thoughts. Whatever. She would figure out who this woman was, finish the job, and take the entire cut for herself before this Killian Jones got off his ass and bothered to come to work. And then she’d shoot the same knowing smirk back at the partner she didn’t need and let him meet whatever end Gold had planned alone.

Assassinations weren’t a team sport, and she wasn’t about to let them become one.

A red car rolled around the corner, slowing as it approached the house, and Emma sat up straighter. She could just make out the target behind the wheel, hands tapping casually on the curve of it. Even from afar, the woman looked nice -- exactly the kind of woman who didn’t really deserve to be killed. That was nothing new, though -- most of the people whose photos she got in those envelopes didn’t deserve what they got, either.

She had cared more about that at the start, but ten years was a long time to build walls between her better judgement and the necessary evil of her work.

The woman was just about to exit the car when Emma’s passenger door creaked open and the car dipped as another figure slid into the seat beside her. Even before she turned toward the person in the grey hoodie, she had a small knife in hand, palmed from where it always lived in the side pocket of her door, and bound for the intruder’s neck. But he -- it had to be a he by the way he filled out the seat -- was fast, too, and had a hand on her wrist with the tip of her blade inches from his skin.

“That’s not,” he said, drawing his hood down with his free hand, “any way to treat your partner.”

“Get out of my car,” she snapped, not bothering to drop her hand as she turned back to the woman’s house. The entire exchange between her and Killian had been moments-long so the woman was, luckily, still in the driveway -- lucky for Killian because if he had screwed this up for her, she would have left him in the gutter with her knife in his neck, partnership or not.

“I’d only draw more attention to us, not that this car does much by way of blending in.” He forced her hand down to the centre console between them, and she let it happen, if only because two people fighting over a weapon in a parked car really would have caused a scene.

“I don’t remember asking you to weigh in on my car; in fact, I don’t remember asking you to be here at all.”

“I like to think I’m thorough,” he said, leaning over slightly to look out her window as the woman started unloading bags from her trunk. “Besides, if you’re not going to invite me to do recon, I’m going to have to find you myself.”

“Were you following me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, love. I’ve better things to do with my time than trail a second-rate assassin.” He ignored the rage sweeping over her face and nodded out the window to the woman. “I’ve been following her.”

“And what the hell do you think it is I’m doing here?” she asked sharply.

“A lot of sitting, by the looks of it.” He squeezed her wrist in a bone-crushing grip until she dropped the knife between them, and while she thought about picking it back up, she settled for glaring at him and leaving it where it was. “And I found out where she works. What do you have to show for this little lounge-fest of yours?”

She ignored the barb for the moment in lieu of the other piece of information he’d let drop. “You did not,” she said flatly. She was really starting to hate this guy. “Where?”

“You know that bookshop cafe down the street from the office? Percolate & Parchment?” He paused a moment for her to catch up, picking absently at the woven strands of the shelf beneath her dash. “She works there. Barista, though when I went in she seemed more interested in selling me a book than making a cappuccino.”

“You went in?” Emma regarded him skeptically, but the faintly red tips of his ears gave away the truth of his statement. Gold had rules about interacting with targets -- ideally never, practically only when necessary if the target was big enough, if the hit was important. Emma herself had never actually met a target in person, even on big hits, and it had never been an issue.

Second-rate assassin my ass.

“Well, if it’s as I say and she’s important, then we should use whatever means available to understand who she is and how best to carry out the hit.” His eyes flashed away from hers for only a moment, but it struck her as off and then instantly she knew -- knew that behind the cocky grin and the uncompromising confidence was something a little more vulnerable, a little more human. And, more than that, it was something he didn’t want her to see. “And if it’s as you say,” he continued, “and my head’s on the line, what do I care what I do to get the job done?”

“Practical,” she said drily, turning back to look out the window to hide the softening she could already feel around her eyes, because his voice just then had sounded different than she ever would have expected from him. It sounded like late nights in empty cars and on cold, windy rooftops, like being alone with your thoughts so long you forgot there was ever anything else; like being on edge frequently enough that you stopped caring what happened. It sounded uncomfortably familiar, and she wasn’t about to let that take the divide between them and turn it into something murky and complicated.

The woman was just closing the trunk, her bags lined up neatly on the front porch of the house. She looked so civilized doing it that Emma had to wonder who had called the hit. She never met the people who hired her, but Gold usually put it on the information sheet that accompanied the target photos. Once the surprise of Killian had worn off the night she got the assignment, Emma had gone back to the sheet, but it was strangely empty this time around. No name, no profession, no hire details -- just this address and the deadline for the hit. It was almost sloppy in its lack of detail, but Emma knew better than to question Gold. She had known it even longer than she had been working for the man, long enough that the knowledge was in her bones.

And she had always been resourceful.

“What’s her name?” she found herself asking regardless, eyes still on the woman. She didn’t want to ask Killian, didn’t want to admit in doing it that she still didn’t know for herself, but he was here, and if he had met their target he probably knew. More than that, Emma needed the connection. It felt too invasive to sit here planning the end of a person she didn’t know even at the most basic level. Even if the hits had lost their edge over the years, she still needed to hold the names of her targets in her mind, the details of who they were and what they did and why they were at the wrong end of her gun. It didn’t make it better, but it made it feel...right -- right that she would carry these pieces of the people she took away with her for the rest of her immortal life, right that their memory would die the same way she eventually would, at the hand of the man who had ensnared them all in this in the first place.

“Belle,” he said quietly, gravely, like he knew why she had asked. Emma nodded once, turning the name over in her head, adding it to the paltry collection of details. Killian didn’t say anything for several long minutes, the two of them watching out of Emma’s window as Belle moved everything inside, and then for a few moments after until Killian said, “We could do it now, you know. We’re both here, it’s quiet, and if you didn’t see anyone since you’ve been here she’s probably alone. It’s a good opportunity.”

“We don’t know anything about her,” Emma protested. She was well aware that days of recon and stakeouts were not crucial components of a hit, and that they probably weren’t business as usual for him the same way they were for her, but the idea of doing the job and leaving while their target was still a stranger...

“I know, but when are we going to get a chance like this again?” He glanced in the back seat, but he wouldn’t find what he was looking for back there. “Do you have…”

“We could make it work,” she said, thinking of the knives hidden all around the car and the gun she had tucked away well within reach. It wasn’t her usual long-range rifle, but it would do if it had to.

“Are we going to?”

She held back what wanted to be a trailing sentence, a formless I… out in the air, because she knew what made sense. Yes made sense, yes was practical, yes was what a decade of this life told her she should say. But there was the fact that they still knew next to nothing about Belle except for her name and where to find her, and then there was the one thing that probably did make her a second rate assassin.

“Not now,” Emma said finally. “Not here.”

She could feel Killian’s gaze on her for a long moment, but just as she thought he was going to argue, he leaned back in his seat with a definitive nod and said, “Okay.”

She didn’t let her surprise show as she mirrored his nod in response, and didn’t waste any time putting the car in gear and pulling away from the house. She felt a pressure on her chest slowly ease as they turned onto the main road and out of Belle’s neighbourhood, the image that had been running through her mind slowly fading. It was a beautiful neighbourhood, and in the time she had been parked, she had seen two young families and several more yards with colourful toys that provided undeniable evidence of more. She pictured the lives these families probably had, careless and happy like she had dreamed of all through her childhood, and she couldn’t shake the image of one of those kids finding the body, of the stain her work would leave on the neighbourhood. She took lives, yes, but she drew the line at taking from children the peace and certainty and childhood she had never had.

“You can drop me off anywhere,” Killian said quietly beside her, and she clenched her teeth as she realized she had almost forgotten he was still in the car.

“Did you park somewhere downtown?”

“Took the bus.” He shot her a twist of a smile, the familiar smugness returning. “Your target knowing what you drive is just asking for trouble.”

“Only if you get noticed, which wouldn’t happen if you were any good,” she shot back, a wicked grin curling in return. “Where do you live? I’ll drop you off.”

“Nice try, love.” An eyebrow drifted up to his hairline, and she had to offer him a nod in concession. “You tried to stab me not fifteen minutes ago. You’re not getting within a hundred yards of my house.”

“Congratulations. You just passed Assassin 101.” She rolled her eyes but her grin didn’t fade. “I’m not just driving around with you for the rest of the afternoon. Tell me where to go, or I’m dropping you on a street corner.”

“Street corner’s fine.” He gestured in the general direction they were headed. “You know that grocery store on the corner of East and Pine? That’d be great.”

“What, you hitting a bag boy next?”

“No, but I do plan on putting an end to a frozen pizza later this evening.” God, he was quick. If he had been anyone else, she might have laughed at the quip. But he wasn’t, so she settled on keeping that twist of a smile for the next three blocks.

He didn’t immediately leave when she pulled into a parking spot at the store, instead pulling a hand up and through his hair and turning to her with a measure of hesitation in his expression.

“Give me your number,” he said. Now that she laughed at.

“Fuck you, no. Why?”

“Partners, remember?” He tossed his phone in her lap, unlocked and open to the contacts screen. “We’ll go to the coffee shop tomorrow. There’s a vacant office in the building opposite. We can figure out our plan from there.”

“And just meeting there wouldn’t work because…”

“Are you always this bloody stubborn?” He sighed heavily. “You have a work phone, I know you do. Just give me that. It’s not tied to you so I can’t somehow use it to your detriment, and you know Gold would let me have it if I did anything to jeopardize his operation. I don’t see what the problem is.”

He was right, and they both knew it, so Emma picked up his phone with a scowl and gave him the number to the nondescript phone Gold had given her years back. She didn’t use it much -- even Gold barely contacted her on it, and he was the only one who had both the number and a reason to call -- so it wasn’t really a problem. But...

“It’s the principle,” she said. “You don’t just go asking for girls’ phone numbers when you’ve just been talking about casual murder.”

“Not casual,” he snapped too quickly. “Professional, and frequent, but not…”

“Jesus. It was a joke.” She tossed the phone back in his lap with no small degree of frustration in her voice. “Now get out. I’ve got things to do.”

“Don’t beat around the bush, do you?” He had the audacity to look offended at her tone, but he opened the door and got out anyway, offering a sarcastic eternal thanks for your hospitality before he slammed the door.

She wasn’t even out of the parking lot, though, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and set it on her thigh as she turned back onto the main road, glancing down at the message on the screen. It was a number she didn’t know, but it could only have been one person.

Never say I’m not fair, said Killian Jones, his number in bright white figures on her screen.

-------

They met at eight the next night at the office building across the street from Percolate & Parchment, an hour and a half before the coffee shop was set to close. She saw Killian the moment she entered the building, lingering in the lobby like he had gotten here well in advance and had been waiting a while. In the moment it took him to look up, she cursed him for looking so good in his suit, a plain navy number with a crisp white shirt and red tie that suited him perfectly. When he did look up and caught her gaze with his, the grin he gave her told her he knew how he looked and had expected her reaction.

Not that, when his eyes travelled down over her simple patterned blouse and slim black trousers, he was very subtle in his admiration, either.

“Eyes to the front of the class there, Jones,” she said quietly as she came to stand in front of him, offering him a firm handshake that slotted perfectly into the cover that fell into place around them, two business professionals checking out a vacant office after hours.

“Only if you direct yours there also.” He winked as he released her hand, turning to lead her to the elevator. “Almost like we planned it, eh, love?”

“Can’t blame you for copying my moves,” she returned smoothly. It wasn’t necessarily luck that they’d both had the same thought about their attire, about what would fit in best if anyone happened to see them here. Her years of experience had made blending into the background habit, and she supposed it had worked the same way for him, even if she didn’t know whether he’d been in this life as long as she had.

“If I recall,” he ushered her into the elevator with a flat palm as he spoke, every inch the gentleman she knew he wasn’t, and turned to face her as the door closed, an eyebrow already arched, “I got here first. So by rights, you’re copying me.”

“I’d rather die.”

“I know I look heavenly, darling, but please do try to contain yourself.” He took the elbow to his side easily, only shifting slightly to take the blow near the front of his ribcage. As his jacket pulled taut, she saw the faint line of a shoulder holster under his arm, no doubt carrying a weapon that was an equal match to the gun she had tucked in the rear waistband of her pants, hidden neatly beneath her own jacket. The cover clearly only went so far for both of them.

“You’ll be looking even more heavenly when I push you out the window,” she said as the doors opened, gesturing to the wide-open, empty office and the large windows facing the street.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s where I’d go.” His voice was a shade darker now. He walked past her to one of the windows that had a folding chair set up in front of it already, but didn’t sit, instead lingering just beside the window frame and peering down at the darkening street below. “If you pushed me.”

The certainty in his voice made her pause for a moment, that darker note she knew too well from experience. She wished he had just stayed cocky -- cocky she could handle.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’d probably join you eventually.”

His eyes snapped to hers so quickly she barely saw it happening,. They were deep blue and full of something that wasn’t confidence and wasn’t teasing, and she didn’t know what to do with an expression like that coming from someone who was just as likely to be digging her grave as she was his. So she walked over to the window, taking a place on the side opposite Killian, and swept up a pair of binoculars from the seat of the chair. She could feel Killian’s gaze still boring into her even as she raised the binoculars to her eyes, and for another long moment afterwards as she focused on the warm yellow cafe across the street.

“So what are you thinking?” Emma asked. “Short range or long?”

“What, love?”

“The hit. Are we going in there with pistols and knives or are we doing it from here?”

There was a long pause as Killian caught up, and the delay felt distracted and sloppy even to Emma’s ears. “We can’t see the full shop from this far up,” he said eventually. “Close range would be more of a guarantee. But…”

“Messier,” Emma finished, nodding. “More chance to be seen, for her to scream or try to fight.”

“So long range, then. There are good shots from here. We could make it.”

“Easy.” Even though some of the back of the shop was obscured by the angle, there were plenty of opportunities for clear shots from this window. Early in the morning or late at night would be best, a clean shot between the eyes as Belle opened or locked up the double doors facing the street. Even at the counter would do, something a little more private. Emma could see Belle with crystal clarity standing behind the espresso machine now, could get a clear shot that would put her behind the counter when she fell, obscured from the eyes of the street. By the time someone found Belle, Emma and Killian would be long gone without a trace. “We’re going to have to take this stupid lawn chair with us before we--” Emma let her sentence drop off as Belle came out from behind the machine, sliding a finished drink toward a smiling woman across the counter in a white to-go cup with a distinctive black scrollwork P in sharp relief on the side, the cup turned at an almost perfect angle for Emma to see it clearly.

“She doesn’t own the cafe, does she,” Emma said to Killian. It wasn’t a question.

“No, she only started a few months ago. Place’s been here--”

“Forever,” Emma finished absently, not taking her eyes off the cup as the customer carried it out the door.

She was an idiot. She should have recognized this place, the name, as soon as Kilian had said it. It had been here longer than Emma had, one of the first places she had been to when she’d come to the city. It was a remnant of her past and she steered clear of it now, but she still should have remembered. It was the cup that flagged the memory, that curling P she had seen in a spindly hand and on the corner of a thick oak desk day after day for years. Even before then, it had been a constant fixture on bedside tables and a warm granite countertop and in a library she wasn’t allowed in.

She knew that cup well, and it changed everything.

“I know who called the hit,” Emma said, turning to Killian abruptly and shoving the binoculars in his hands.

“How--”

“Look at that cup.” She pointed in the direction the customer was slowly disappearing, and to his credit, Killian wasted no time in training the binoculars on the disappearing figure. “Where do you recognize that from?”

It was one moment, then two, then, “Bloody hell.”

“No kidding.”

“It could be a coincidence,” he said, even as he dropped the binoculars to look at her with wide eyes full of realization.

“A coincidence that Gold’s been drinking that coffee for--” sixteen “--years, except for the last few weeks?” She’d noticed the brand new in-office coffee machine and lack of white paper cups on Gold’s desk when she had gotten her assignment before this one. She should have known there was a reason for it beyond, Convenience, dearie.

“And that’s why this is a partner hit.” She could almost see the wheels turning as Killian put it all together. And because she was watching, she also saw his eyes harden and dart over to her right before he said, “I’ve got a rifle in the ceiling.”

“What?” Her voice sounded flat and harsh even to her own ears. “Do you know how much of a risk that is?”

“Of course I know,” he snapped. “But if Gold called the hit, and if he thinks she’s a risk…”

“We could do it right now and be done with it,” she finished. He was right, of course, and she had thought the same thing when she recognized that cup. It was what someone loyal would do, what a good assassin would do. If she were any good, she would have carried out the hit at Belle’s house yesterday.

But if Killian were any good, he would have carried out the hit from this window when he came to hide the rifle.

“Or,” Killian said, and she looked over at him with hope simmering dangerously in her chest. “We could recon one more night just to be sure, just to get a plan in place.”

“I wouldn’t mind a decent exit strategy. Or a contingency plan.”

“Then we wait.” He looked almost relieved, and she liked him just a little bit more for it.

“When? Tomorrow?”

“I’m busy tomorrow,” he said. “And the shop’s closed Tuesday and Wednesday.”

“Thursday it is, then.” Emma turned back to the shop and felt Killian turn with her, the two of them looking down at the warm yellow light seeping onto the street and the faint figure of Belle moving behind the counter.

“How many do you think he’s had?” Killian asked softly after a moment.

“What?” But Emma knew what he meant. Gold was centuries old, and soulmates weren’t a one-time thing. It was a gift, this thing the universe gave them, but it didn’t account for a business like Gold’s selling immortality one hit at a time. For Gold to look like he did, around fifty physically, he had to have had a lot of soulmates.

And had to have killed them all.

“I don’t know,” she continued. “Fifty? A hundred? More? I don’t even know how old he is.”

“Me neither.”

They stood in silence for several more minutes, Killian tapping an absent rhythm on the windowsill, Emma cataloguing every hit she had ever done to figure out whether any of those targets had been Gold’s soulmate. It was an uncomfortable thought that she might have done something he wanted, something for his benefit. She didn’t want to now, either, but she couldn’t see a way around it.

Maybe she’d let Killian take the shot. Maybe it would matter less if it came from him.

“Well,” Killian said finally, pushing off the wall and running a hand through his hair. “If we’re not going to do it tonight we might as well get going. Don’t want to linger up here and give anyone any cause for suspicion.”

“As if the rifle in the ceiling wasn’t enough.” Emma rolled her eyes but followed him back into the elevator. It was near closing time for the shop anyway, and she didn’t expect to see much more tonight that would tell her anything about Belle she hadn’t already figured out.

“It’s practical to keep a rifle in the ceiling,” Killian argued with a small grin. “Good for security.”

“Yeah, I’m sure any robber would definitely give you time to start popping ceiling tiles up to grab it.”

“You never know. Robbers these days aren’t what they used to be.”

“Shame.” The elevator doors opened onto the lobby, putting them face-to-face with a tired looking man in a dress shirt and jeans -- no doubt someone who actually did work there squeezing in some overtime.

“I do hope the space has everything you need,” Killian said smoothly, letting Emma step out ahead of him and nodding pleasantly at the man as they passed. “But please do phone if you have any additional questions.”

“I’ll talk to our facilities manager about the improvements we’d need to make,” she said, flashing him a business-grade smile as they crossed the lobby toward the door, elevator doors closing on the man. “But I think it will work nicely.”

“Glad to hear it.” Killian held the door open for her, and there was a definite sparkle in his eye when she allowed it, the cover silencing any protests. On the street now with late-night foot traffic flowing around them, there was no room for one more quip about the rifle in the ceiling or for a reminder that she hadn’t pushed him out the window upstairs. There was only one final, firm handshake between industry professionals, and then he was turning left and she was turning right and that was it.

She hadn’t really planned on making a window joke, but she found she missed the opportunity.

-------

Emma was nearly home when her work phone buzzed on the seat beside her. She glanced over absently at the first stop light, expecting Killian to add some detail about their meeting on Thursday he hadn’t gotten a chance to at the building, but it wasn’t Killian. It was the only other person who knew this number, and the one she wished didn’t.

Come to the house, it said, simple as that. She wanted to say no instantly, as she always did. Nothing from Gold was ever an invitation, and this was no different. It was a power play cloaked in pleasantry, but he wasn’t fooling either of them. With a long sigh, she hung a U-turn in the intersection and headed out of town.

Gold’s office was impressive, but his house was something else entirely. A sprawling building on a country property just outside of town, the money he took from clients and assassins alike dripped from every brick, and Emma hated it. It was a hulking structure, dark with mahogany and stone, the leaded windows sharp teeth when the light hit them at a certain angle. The sconces on either side of the door were on, and there was light shining through the front windows when she pulled up, a mockery of a home. The worst thing was that it almost tricked her every time -- coming up the long driveway from the dark road with the house glowing warmly in the middle of the property, it was almost welcoming until she got closer and saw Gold’s car parked in the driveway, saw the upstairs window that looked out over the road, and remembered who exactly lived in this house.

She knocked twice on the big wooden door, and the sound hadn’t even finished echoing through the yard when Gold swung it open.

“You never need to knock, dearie,” he said in a voice that would have been kind coming from anyone else.

“Visitors knock. I knock.” She let him usher her in and fought the urge to look back at the door as it closed behind her, to catch a final glimpse of her bright yellow Bug parked in the driveway, as if it was the last sliver of sunlight she was going to see for a while. “Do you have another job for me that couldn’t wait till the morning?”

“I just wanted to discuss your current target,” he said, leading her into a living room with deep brown leather furniture and dim table lamps casting heavy shadows in the corners. “And to see how you liked working with Killian Jones.”

It sounded innocent, but she knew Gold well enough to hear the edge beneath the words. Hearing him ask was shocking enough because he never checked up on hits, but with what she knew of Belle she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“I don’t need a partner,” she said because he would expect her to. “It’s one target. I can take the hit alone.”

“Team building is important, dearie.”

“It’s infuriating and full of itself, and the more hands on a hit the more likely things will go wrong.” She was surprised to find that she didn’t want to say those things, but she knew Gold asked her here to hear them. As well as she knew him, he knew her better, and while that grated harshly, she couldn’t fake a change of heart. “But…” she said, rolling her eyes and forcing a huff of breath, “he’s competent. I guess. And he hasn’t screwed it up -- yet -- so he’s fine.”

“Excellent.” She almost expected him to tent his fingers, but he just lowered himself into one of the chairs and looked up at her expectantly. “And your target?”

“Far as we can tell, she’s unremarkable. Young, works at a cafe downtown, lives alone. We’re going to do the hit long range, from the building across the street. It’ll be quick and thorough, done by the end of the week.” She scowled slightly and looked down at him with something edging on contempt. “It’s a straightforward job. I could have done it alone.”

“Well, maybe you can teach Mr. Jones a thing or two.” Gold looked satisfied, and Emma hated that she had given him that. “You should stay a while. I’m having dinner delivered shortly.”

“I have a few things to do before the hit,” she said, forcing a slightly bored tone to cover up the frantic energy she could feel building inside her, the panic at the idea of staying. “I want it to go well.”

Gold just looked at her for a moment, and she knew he knew she was lying. There was something too cunning in his eyes, and then a small smile curled on his lips. Everything was power with him, and he knew he had the upper hand here, as he always did. He had asked her to come, and she couldn’t say no. He had asked her about work which he herself had trapped her in, whose assignment he had dictated. And he had asked her to stay, and while she had declined, if he asked again, she would have to say yes.

The only reason he nodded once and jerked his head toward the door in a silent dismissal was because he was choosing to let her go, not because her words meant anything to him.

She didn’t bother with a goodbye, hustling down the too-familiar hallway and back out the front door. Five minutes start to finish, but the short visit was enough to remind her of her place. As if she ever forgot.

-------

Belle was Emma’s only target, so the next day passed unremarkably with no recon and no action to speak of. She was hoping for a quiet night too, something she didn’t get a lot of, and thought she was going to get it as the hour got later and she stayed sprawled on the couch with the TV on in the background. But just shy of midnight, the shrill of her work phone echoed through the apartment from where she had left it on the kitchen counter. She groaned, but her heart was in her throat, because if this was Gold again she didn’t know what she’d do.

She answered without looking at the screen, a simple and curt, “Yes?”

“Emma?” The smooth accent wasn’t Gold’s, and the ragged breathing behind it definitely wasn’t. Gold didn’t do anything for himself except sit at his stupid desk, so it could only be one person.

“Who the hell gave you the right to call me?” she demanded, taking the phone to sink back on the couch as she scowled at Killian through the receiver. “We said tomorrow. I’m going to be there tomorrow. End of--”

“Where do you live?” he cut in. “I need to come over.”

“Like hell! You got lucky with the phone number, buddy. I’ll see you--”

“Emma.” There was something in his voice that made her finger hover above the disconnect button but not press it -- not the confidence she had gotten used to, but not the vulnerability that seemed to lurk there, either. No, this was something that she would have called fear if she didn’t know better, and that a was a dangerous thing for anyone in their profession. “I’m...working. Asshole had a gun and he knew what he was about. I need to come over.”

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Emma knew what that meant. Between him calling her and that tone in his voice, she knew things had gone very south. If he meant what she thought he meant, and he was calling her because he couldn’t handle it himself, he really did need somewhere to go with someone who wouldn’t ask questions.

“Shit. Fine.” She sighed as she gave him the address, ignoring the fact that his rough thank you made something shift in her chest. She wasn’t expecting him quickly, but it was maybe fifteen minutes before there was a knock at her door.

“Lock’s broken on the main door,” he said in greeting when she let him in, shooting her a small grin even though his hand was clamped over his side and she could see a dark, wet mark on the fabric of his black shirt. “Not very safe.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a small armoury under the bed so I don’t care.” She had weapons hidden in more places than just under the bed -- one under the table just to her right, in fact -- but he didn’t need to know. She jerked her head down the hall and gestured for him to follow her. “Come into the bathroom, would you? I’ll never get my security deposit back if you get blood on my floor.”

“What a welcome.”

“I said you could come. I didn’t say I was a good hostess.” She let him enter the small bathroom before her, directing him to the side of the tub. “That shirt needs to come off.”

“Ah, I see your game here.” He waggled his brows but the gesture fell flat even if it did elicit an eye roll from her. He pulled the shirt off, his mouth a grim line as the movement pulled on the wound. He dropped it into her bathtub and clamped his hand over his side again in one smooth movement.

She caught herself looking as his eyes were on the bloody shirt in her tub, and though she told herself she shouldn’t be, she still allowed her gaze to sweep over him once, taking in the map of scars on his chest, the faint line where his neck met the paler skin of his chest, and the tattoos inked over his heart and on his forearm. She dropped her eyes just as he turned back to her, twisting the tap to hide the sudden movement and rinsing off her hands. “So, what happened?”

“My target was a policeman. He had his weapon on him and was a bloody quick draw.”

“Oh, so you get assigned a cop and think to yourself, I’ll just get him while he’s at work, armed, and a radio call away from backup? Great idea.” She crouched in front of him and moved his hand from the wound gently, ignoring for the moment the worry that bloomed when she felt his blood slick under her fingers. “Jesus Christ, Killian. You couldn’t dodge or something?”

“I was aiming at the time,” he said, grimacing as she prodded the edges of the wound. It didn’t look critical, but she knew he wouldn’t have called her if the bullet wasn’t still in there.

“Did you at least make the hit?”

“Of course I did.”

“Good.” She stood and wiped her hands down the side of her jeans, only realizing after that she would probably have to throw them out after this. “You can use your cut to pay the bill I’m going to give you when all this is over.”

“Viper.”

“Second-rate assassin.” She threw him a smirk she didn’t really feel and stepped back into the hall. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“Not like I’m bleeding or anything, love. Take your time.” She could hear the strain in his voice even as he teased her, and she didn’t want to be glad he was here making himself her problem, but she was.

She wasn’t gone long, shoving a three-quarters empty bottle of rum in his hands when she returned and folding an old dish towel on the bathroom counter before pulling a first aid kit out from under the sink.

“Drink that. It’ll help a little. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” He sounded so indignant at the word that she had to smile at it, but he twisted off the cap and took a swig nonetheless. His eyes screwed shut against the burn and stayed closed, his shoulders lifting as he sighed. “I do apologize for this, Emma. I’d have done it myself if I could see the wound properly, and you know Gold.”

Yes, she did know Gold, which meant she knew his rule about injuries on the job -- namely that if you got hit, you were slow enough to have been seen, which meant you could have been identified, which meant you found yourself at the wrong end of one of your colleagues’ weapons and nobody ever found your body.

“Thank me after you don’t die tonight,” she said tightly instead of saying all that. They both knew it, and dwelling on it -- or on the possibility that even if Emma fixed Killian up Gold still might find out -- wasn’t going to help the situation.

“I fully trust that you won’t -- Christ, woman!” That was because Emma had grazed the edge of the wound with a pair of tweezers. She looked up at him and arched a brow, tapping the bottle of rum.

“How the hell did you think I was going to do this? That’s what the rum is for, you ass.”

“Could’ve warned me.” He took a long swig from the bottle and tipped his head toward his side in assent.

“You came to me. That’s warning enough for you that things are going to hurt.”

“That’s alright, love.” The words came through gritted teeth as she probed the wound again, finding the bullet quickly. He was lucky it was small and hadn’t gone too deep, and that it hadn’t hit anything important. His breath caught once as she worked but he didn’t protest again. “I like it rough.”

His voice was gravel, and it was probably because of the pain, but the sound of it settled somewhere deep in Emma’s chest, heat blooming beneath it. She was suddenly and intensely aware that he was half-naked in her apartment, his skin warm beneath her hand, and that nobody had probably ever seen him this vulnerable. The pale lacework of scars on his chest spoke of previous injuries, but the ragged look to some of the larger ones said that those injuries had been tended sloppily and hastily. And alone.

“Well,” she said finally, “I don’t call digging foreign objects out of guys’ sides a good time, so enjoy this while you can if that’s what you’re into.”

“I assure you,” he breathed a curse as she pulled the bullet out entirely, “there are things I enjoy more.”

“Thank God for that.” She pressed the dish towel to his side, and he held it in place without having to be asked while she dug through the first aid kit for iodine and a long roll of gauze.

“You’d be a good paramedic, you know,” he said, swallowing another mouthful of rum. “You’re quite calm under pressure.”

“Oh, please. It’s a glorified flesh wound, you big baby. How do you know I wouldn’t be in hysterics if you actually were bleeding out on my floor?” She was aware as she said it that it was not, in fact, a glorified flesh wound, but she figured the banter would keep his mind off the burn of the iodine in a moment. At the very least, she was enjoying herself.

“I just know.” He hissed a little as she removed the towel and dabbed the wound with iodine, but he didn’t say anything. “I assure you, if it was you who got shot I’d be running around, arms flailing…”

“You would not.” She grinned despite herself, packing the hole with gauze and sticking a large white bandage over the whole thing. “There. I think the bullet was small enough that you won’t need stitches, so we’re done.”

“Just like that?” He twisted a bit to look down, running a cautious finger over the bandage. “That was quick.”

“If you want, I can take my time and dig around a bunch more. Be a little less efficient about it. Maybe invite in an infection or two.”

“Touche.” He stood, fingers ghosting across the bandage again as it pulled. “Thank you for this, Emma. When I asked for your number I didn’t quite intend--”

“Yeah, well nobody plans on getting shot.” She shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable in such a small space with him. “Seriously, it wasn’t a big deal.”

“We both know I was looking at an unmarked grave if Gold had found out, so yes, Emma, it was a big deal,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to let you brush this off without thanking you for it.”

“You can bring me coffee on Thursday and we’ll call it even.” She dumped the tweezers, bullet, and bloody towel in the sink before stepping into the hall and nodding towards the living room. “You want to just...hang out for a sec until I’m sure you’re not going to keel over on the street or something?” she asked, then gestured toward the rum bottle still clutched in his hand. “I’ll get you a glass for that.”

“No need, darling.” He held up the nearly empty bottle with a sheepish grin as he followed.

“Guess I’ll just get you a straw, then,” she muttered, directing him to the couch with a flat palm, and disappeared into the kitchen. She didn’t get a straw but did get herself a beer from the fridge, and then leaned back against the closed fridge door and closed her eyes for a moment, just breathing. She hadn’t given herself much time to think about it from the time Killian had called until now, but he had been in her bathroom with a literal bullet in his side. And he had called her -- had called her, and she barely even knew him. Could have brought him in here and held a knife to his neck a second time and not pulled it away.

She didn’t want to think that he trusted her.

With a final deep breath, she went to join him in the living room. He was sitting on the far side of the couch, eyes roaming around the spartan room. Emma had never had anybody over to this place, and it felt more intimate than it should have, knowing that he saw how few personal things she had, knowing he was putting together why.

“You want to watch a movie or something?” she asked, grabbing the TV remote from between them and flicking on the set before he had a chance to reply. “You don’t need to stay long -- just convince me you’re not going to die before you leave and I’ll be satisfied.”

“Didn’t think you’d be so concerned for my well-being considering you did threaten to kill me the day we met.”

“I did not, first of all. And if you’re not careful, I still might decide to use you for professional development.”

“It was implied,” he said drily, then jerked his chin at the TV. “What do you like to watch?”

“You’re the guest. You can pick.” She tossed him the remote and took a swig of her beer. Despite Killian here, still shirtless, she could feel the ghost of her quiet evening returning.

“You’ve done more than enough for me tonight, Emma. You can--”

“You just got shot. You pick. Stop arguing with me.”

He raised both eyebrows at that but kept the remote, muttering yes ma’am as he clicked through the channels.

He settled on a cartoon, darting a glance over at her to see if she’d object. She arched an eyebrow of her own but let it slide, tipping back her drink and tossing him a throw in place of the shirt now ruined in her bathtub.

“If you were to ask anyone what two assassins watch on TV on a Monday night, I bet nobody would believe this,” she said, eliciting a chuckle in response from him.

“I bet nobody would believe two assassins are hanging out on a Monday night, cartoons or not.”

She inclined her head in his direction by way of a reply, but he didn’t say anything more, letting the conversation lapse into silence. She was never not aware of him sitting a few feet away, but with the TV on low in the background and the day suddenly weighing on her, it was peaceful just to be there together with someone else.

Is this what life would have been like if she and Gold had never crossed paths? Quiet nights at home with friends or otherwise, people in her life to drink beers with after work, someone on her couch night after night breathing gently beside her, not demanding anything, just existing? She spent a lot of time angry at Gold for what he had taken from her and the person he had made her into, both inadvertently and purposely, but her anger always burned for bigger things, not for the quiet moments like this that she hadn’t even realized she was missing.

Over the course of the episode, as she thought about the other lives she would never get to live, she could feel Killian slowly drifting beside her, the adrenaline from the shot leeching away until all that was left was the haze of the rum and the weariness that came with the job. It became apparent very quickly that he wasn’t about to die, and she could have asked him to leave. Should have asked him to leave. But she convinced herself that they would finish the episode, and even as the credits rolled and a commercial ran, she couldn’t find the words to kick him out.

“How…” he started, turning his head lazily to look at her, his blinks long and languid with liquor, the bottle long empty. “How did you get tangled up in all this? With Gold?”

Her entire body tensed and she wanted to snap at him to mind his own business, but…

...but she had never had anybody ask. Never had anybody know what she did enough to wonder how she got into a line of work that was so outside the law it seemed absurd. Never really had anybody know her while she was working for Gold, period. So instead she settled on, “How do you know I didn’t seek it out myself?”

“I’ve met the people who do,” he said, the skin around his eyes tightening as he frowned deeply. “They’re not...methodical about things, and don’t do the recon, and don’t worry about the cover or about how to do things quick and quiet and get out fast. They treat it like...an art form, almost, and not in the good way.” His voice dropped slightly as he finished, “They’re not you.”

“How did you get into it, then?” she asked. “Because that’s not you either.”

He chuckled darkly and put the rum bottle to his lips before realizing it was empty. Emma wordlessly swapped the rum for her own half-empty bottle of beer and just waited, silent, until he took a swig and said, “I’m...older than I look.”

“Aren’t we all,” she muttered.

“No, Emma. Older. Not thirty, or fifty. Hundreds of years. And way back at the start of them, I had someone.” He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, and she instantly regretted this line of questioning.

“You don’t…”

“It was a long time ago,” he said, dropping his hand. “It’s fine. She wasn’t my soulmate, but I cared for her deeply. We went to the market one day to buy fabrics and vegetables and spices for a voyage the next day, and when we came back to that port months later, one of the vendors was waiting for us at the docks. Short, mean as a viper...you know him.” Killian looked at Emma significantly until she breathed Gold’s name on a breath of disbelief, and he nodded. Hundreds of years. “She was his soulmate, and it was starting to show already on his face. He wasn’t subtle about it -- had a knife out the minute he stormed our ship, and I knew.” His eyes drifted shut, and this time they didn’t open again even though she could see his pupils darting around inside the lids as he remembered. “I fought him, of course, but he’d had probably at least a hundred years of experience already by then, and I was never going to be a match for him. Not when he was so angry, or so desperate for more years.”

He paused a moment, and she wanted to ask how. How had Killian gone from a man fighting Gold to a man working for him, killing for him? The depth of emotion in his voice betrayed just how heavily the years that had passed since sat on his shoulders, and she wondered how he could walk beneath the weight of it all every day and not have it show.

“I was lucky enough to impress him,” Killian said, though the word didn’t sound like luck, “and he asked me to come work for him. I declined.” His eyes snapped open then, and there were storms raging in the depths of the blue there. “And then he found my brother.”

Oh. Now this was a story she knew well.

“He explained his business, how many he had working for him, and the lengths he could -- and would -- go to to find the people he was after. And if I didn’t work for him, Liam would end up on a dock somewhere with a sword pierced straight through his throat.” He looked over at her, the horror of hearing that still plain on his face even after so long. “I saw his eyes, Emma. He meant it.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“Aye, I suppose you do.” He sighed and turned his head to the ceiling, and just then he looked exceptionally lost. “And the rest, as they say, is history. I quit sailing, left my brother to the Navy, and I’ve been working for Gold ever since. Because he travelled around so much, Liam got to live the last few hundred years with me. He found Elsa twenty years ago, and now I’ve got both of them to protect.”

“And the debt for sparing both their lives is going to keep you in this business until they’re gone,” she finished for him, her own eyes drifting shut at the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t a new story by any means, but it was worse hearing it from someone else’s mouth, about someone else’s loved ones.

“Aye.” He sighed deeply, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet, heavy with the vulnerabilities being spoken aloud. “And when they are, Gold will lose his leverage, yes, but I’ll also have lost any opportunity to know them without this bargain always looming on the sidelines.”

“Do they know?” she asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

“No. Liam would try to fight it, and Elsa would try to make it better, but then they would both have Gold marring their lives as he is mine. I don’t want that for them.”

“I wouldn’t, either.”

“Aye, I’m getting the sense that you know all too well what I’m talking about.”

She nodded, and the silence stretched as Killian waited for her to elaborate, the opening scenes of a new episode casting them both in flickering blue light. When she didn’t continue, he blinked once, long, and rubbed his hands along the legs of his pants absently.

“I should go,” he said. “I’ve imposed on your evening enough, I think.”

“Right now?” Emma gestured to the TV, a too-quick and too-transparent cover for the almost instinctive question that had practically come out on its own. “He hasn’t even gotten his milkshake licence -- could you really forgive yourself if you missed that milestone?”

He stared at her for one long moment, a soft grin slowly spreading over his face and lighting his eyes, the corners crinkling with faint creases, and then he leaned back into the cushions and tugged the blanket tighter around himself.

“No, I don’t believe I could.”

Killian ended up staying for two more episodes back-to-back, and by the time he finally did stand up to leave, they were both yawning and clumsy with exhaustion. He pulled his ruined shirt back on for the trip home, assuring her that the blood would be covered the moment he got in his car, and bid her a simple goodbye with another emphatic thank you as he exited into the hall.

She leaned in the doorway and watched him walk toward the stairs, his steps heavy and slow with the hour and the liquor and the confessions and the pain. His story and the years he had belonged to Gold still rang in Emma’s mind, along with the fact that he had called her, had come here, had trusted her enough to tell her how he had gotten caught up in this life. And yes, she had let him in, had fixed him up, had listened, but she hadn’t really given him anything, had she? And she didn’t want it to bother her, but…

“Killian?” she called down the hall, stopping him just before the stairwell. He pivoted to face her, and she could see his eyebrow cock even from a distance. “Emma Swan,” she said, a faint smile playing on her lips as he caught up with her words, as a brilliant grin spread across his. She waved once before he could say anything, stepping back into the apartment with a quiet don’t get shot again before Thursday tossed into the hall before she closed the door.

His faint chuckle followed her in and stayed long into the night.

-------

Emma beat Killian to the empty office on Thursday, the two days passing slowly without work to do. Sometime since they had last been there he had clearly been back because a second folding chair was set up next to the first by the window facing the cafe. She smiled softly at that, the mental image of him sneaking up the elevator in his suit with a lawn chair too ridiculous not to indulge in. She wasn’t in her fake corporate wear today, risking being seen in jeans and a sweater by whoever was still in the office at eight o’clock. At best, she figured she could pass off casual gear for work after hours in one of the other offices in the building. At worst, she still had a gun in her bag.

She sank into the new chair, grabbing the binoculars from the seat of the other and bringing them lazily to her eyes. The cafe was busy, a line half-a-dozen people long snaking in front of the counter, Belle moving behind it with a smile. Emma didn’t know the woman, obviously, but from everything she’d seen she couldn’t help but wonder how someone so sunny and bright was soulmates with the human equivalent of a sewer rat. She wondered if Gold had always been this way or whether all those hundreds of years ago he had been someone worthy of someone like Belle, and the universe hadn’t caught up yet.

The telltale hum of the elevator filled the space before she could go any farther down that trail of thought, and she was on her feet in a moment, gun drawn and trained on the door right as it opened. Killian stepped out and froze the moment he saw her, a smile spreading across his face as he raised both arms in mock surrender.

“If you’ve forgotten,” he said, “I’ve been shot recently and would prefer not to be twice in a week, if it’s all the same to you.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a twist of a smile back, but wedged the gun back in her waistband and reclaimed her seat. “How’s the wound?”

“Sore still, but I’ll live.” He winked as he sank into his own chair. “I had a good doctor.”

“Your doctor should be sued for malpractice on the grounds of operating out of a bathroom that was last cleaned...a while ago.”

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, probably.” She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep the smile from growing, but failed miserably. She handed him the binoculars and leaned back in her chair as he took them, watching the headlights from the cars outside striping along the ceiling as Killian looked out at the cafe. With no lights on, the room was dusky with the late hour and indirect street light, and it struck her that she was going to miss this -- the lawn chairs and the cavernous space, sneaking around with half-formed covers and constantly reminding herself not to forget the rifle in the ceiling when all of this was over.

She turned her head slightly to the side to make a quip about the rifle, but it died on her lips when she found Killian already watching her, his lips a serious line and the binoculars sitting in his lap.

“What?” she asked, peering out at the cafe. “Did something--”

“You like this, don’t you?” he interrupted quietly, ignoring the cafe entirely and gesturing to the space between their two chairs.

“What?”

“This,” he said. “Us. Someone else who knows who you are and what you do. Talking about it without being scared of chasing someone away. You pointing a bloody gun at my face and me not having to worry about whether my coat flaps open enough that my holster pokes out. No covers and no lies. All of it.” The words came out in a rush, his face so open she could tell they were raw and honest, ushered into the open before he could talk himself out of it. She didn’t know how, after being burned so badly by Gold, he could still be so open -- about his past, about this -- but he wasn’t wrong.

“Does it matter if I do?” she asked softly. “We do the hit, we get the payout, we go our separate ways. That’s how it has to be. You know Gold wouldn’t stand for two of his people together. It’s a liability, and we’d both end up dead.”

“I suppose you’re right.” He rubbed a hand over his face and up through his hair, the motion so weary she saw every year in the line of his body, the crushing weight of being alone for so long with so much to say and nobody to say it to. “I’ve just...enjoyed this, Emma. Swan. And I want you to know that.”

Maybe it was the melancholy in his voice just then, maybe it was the way no covers and no lies had settled just beneath her breastbone, maybe it was the way she was never going to see him again after this, or maybe it was because as much as she wasn’t willing to say it, it was nice to tell someone something and know they would understand. Whatever it was, she pulled her gaze from his and looked out the window again as she breathed I’m an orphan into the room.

Killian didn’t say anything in return, but she heard the squeak of his chair as he shifted to face her.

“I was left on the side of the road as a baby,” she continued. “I never knew my parents, bounced around the foster system a lot, until I turned twelve and got adopted.” An ironic smile twisted as she said it, because she still remembered the excitement -- nearing that age when she would be basically unadoptable and getting the news that someone wanted her when nobody ever had. “They said he was a single guy, widowed, but well-off and willing to give me my best life.”

“You’re not…” She had to give it to Killian -- he was smart and he picked things up fast even when she couldn’t quite bring herself to be direct.

“He had the biggest house I’d ever seen,” she said. “Out in the country, tons of property. I had a whole wing basically to myself, and a bedroom of my own, and there was only one room I wasn’t allowed to go in but I didn’t care. And he was…” She didn’t want to say nice because Gold had never been nice, but… “He was...different,” she settled on. “Different than he is now. And I know now that he was basically running a long con and none of it was real but...for six years, it was good.”

“And after six?” Killian asked, his voice low and dangerous in a way she had never heard it.

“I turned eighteen,” she said, shooting him a helpless, bitter little smile. “And he told me what he did for a living. And that he had picked me because he heard about my ‘street smarts’ and because he saw potential there. And that I worked for him now. And then he showed me how much he said I owed him -- everything from the past six years that I thought was mine had just been piling on and becoming debt, and the life of every friend I had ever made and anybody I had started to care about was turned into dollars and added on too. So you’re in this for your brother and your sister-in-law?” She laughed bitterly. “I’m in it for every person I was stupid enough to let in. I’m in it for a thousand lifetimes.”

“You’re Gold’s…” Killian swore emphatically. “That bloody bastard.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said, echoing Killian’s own words from the other night, but she could hear it fall flat. “But you asked how I got here. Tricked into it, same as you.”

What Emma didn’t say aloud was how much it still stung. She was angry at Gold for shanghaiing her into this life, yes -- angry that he was holding hostage the lives of the friends she had once been naive enough to make, punishing her for a life she had barely even gotten to live. But no, what still hurt was that once upon a time, he had given her hope. He had made her think that for once in her life, someone had wanted her. That she got to have the kind of youth she had only ever dreamed of. That she got to have a home, and a family, and a life that wasn’t just defined by what she couldn’t have. It was that he had given her all that and then ripped it away. It was that she didn’t dare to hope anymore, for anything, and she had him to blame.

“Swan…” Killian’s eyes were still slightly too wide, but his voice was blissfully steady as he reached across the space between the chairs and grabbed her hand. “Everything he did...you have to know it wasn’t you, right? He would have done it to anyone.”

“You don’t know my history, Killian.”

“I don’t need to.” His thumb rubbed along the back of her hand as he raised it between them, brought it up to his lips so, so slowly. She had every chance to pull away but her gaze was locked with his, drowning in a sea of deep blue and understanding she had never felt before. His lips against her skin were soft at first, a whisper of a touch, but they deepened as he traced the map of her flingers, her knuckles, her palm with his lips. “You’re worth more than that. You’re worth the world, Emma Swan,” he breathed onto her skin, pressing a kiss to the crease between her thumb and forefinger, the shallow crevice that--

She tore her hand from his and bolted from her chair, standing straight, body taut, in the blink of an eye.

-- the shallow crevice between her thumb and forefinger that hadn’t been there when she had spent an hour cleaning her rifle at home after her last hit the week before. An hour when her eyes had roamed every inch of her hands along with the equipment held in them.

Killian’s eyes were soft but careful as he looked up at her, utterly still. There were words in the blue of them, and his lip pulled slightly where he was biting it, but she didn’t need him to say anything. She knew what this meant, and everything about his expression and the line of his body curving towards her said he did, too.

She pivoted sharply and while she didn’t run, she didn’t waste any time making her way back across the empty space. Something followed that sounded like her name floating on a breath, but she didn’t care. She pushed through the door into the stairwell, and then she did run, feet a sharp staccato against the concrete steps, the sound a hollow echo in the space. For once, she didn’t care who saw, didn’t care about her cover. All she cared about was that her footsteps were the only sound, that the door at the top of the stairs didn’t slam open, that Killian didn’t follow her. She only slowed when she reached the lobby, though her strides were brisk as she crossed it and exited onto the street.

She didn’t look back at the building as she crossed the road and got into her car, but she could feel the imagined heat of Killian’s gaze. If she looked back now, she knew she would see the silhouette of a single figure against the upper windows, his cover also cast aside as he watched her leave him behind.

-------

Emma had never wanted a fucking partner.

Killian had drunk all her rum, but a quarter of a bottle of scotch had been waiting for her at home -- cheap, shitty scotch, but it did the job. Well--it didn’t stop her from turning her hand left and right in the scant light of her living room, studying the topography of her skin as if she had never seen it before, but the alcohol did dull some of the panic that clawed at her chest as her eyes inevitably caught on that one crease that had somehow snuck in all on its own.

Creases meant aging, but Emma didn’t see anyone. She didn’t do anything. She used self-scan at the grocery store and filled her own gas, went to the office and carried out hits from far away and came home to an empty apartment night after night, protecting the world and everyone in it from the fatal bargain that was knowing Emma Swan. She had been so, so careful all these years, and yet--

Emma tipped the scotch back, closing her eyes against the faint burn. Fucking partner.

Had Killian seen the evidence on her? Did he know that he was the only person she really saw, apart from Gold? She wished now that she knew more about soulmate magic, about whether if she ran right now and never saw Killian again, the clock would pause for both of them. Her job was enough proof of the negative, but she let herself dream for a single moment that this was a world that let her choose, that magic she had never asked for didn’t stand in her way.

She took another deep swig. Magic and Gold were standing in her way. Her debt to him was a constant reminder of whose lives were on the line if she tried to run, and though she hadn’t seen any of her friends in over a decade, she had no doubt that Gold knew exactly where they were and how best to hurt them if Emma set a foot out of line.

And then there was Killian’s family, the ways in which Gold would use them to make Killian suffer if Emma did anything. Killian who, despite her best efforts, had somehow gotten tangled up in the black hole that was Emma’s friendship. Killian, who had people to protect the same as she did. Killian, who hadn’t been wrong back at the office.

Emma emptied the final dregs of scotch as she finally let herself settle on the truth. Killian had been right. She did like someone knowing her, knowing what she did. She liked having company on stakeouts. She liked someone teasing her about the likelihood that she’d kill them, liked that the edge to that someone’s voice was grounded in reality, liked that they knew she might actually kill them one day and stuck around anyways. She liked someone else being in on the joke when she used a cover, and liked feeding off a cover as well crafted as her own.

More than that, she liked that that someone was Killian.

But because it was Killian, their future was impossible. He was just as tied to Gold as Emma was, with just as much to lose. Emma knew where that left them, and even though hope was a dangerous burn in her chest, she was glad she didn’t believe in happy endings.

If she did, the reality of this one would hurt that much more.

-------

It had been maybe two hours before Emma heart a soft knock at the door. A small, stubborn part of her considered not answering. She had spent so many years in this apartment with nothing ever changing that it was easy to imagine that nothing ever would if she just didn’t acknowledge that maybe it already had. But after a long moment stretched, filled with her hesitation, there was another knock. This one was more insistent, and she knew that as much as she wanted to deny that a future had finally caught up with her, it wasn’t going to stop knocking at her door until she let it in.

Fucking partner.

She found Killian on the other side of the door, as she knew she would. He looked almost hesitant himself, his smile crooked and sheepish, one hand anchored behind his ear.

“Makes sense now that you threatened to kill me the day we met,” he said, the levity forced but so, so welcome. “You know -- assassin…” He gestured between them, the space pregnant with soulmate.

“I didn’t--”

“Threaten to kill me, I know.” He rolled his eyes. “But it was implied.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“I don’t think I am.” And then suddenly it was about more than the day they’d met. Emma could see the weight of it settle on Killian all at once, his fragile smile finally faltering as he ran a hand up and through his hair with a sigh. “You going to let me in, or are we going to have this conversation in the hall?”

“I’m out of rum,” she said, stepping aside. “And you know I’m a bad host.”

“I had a bullet in my side the last time I was here. I think anything would be an improvement.”

“Yeah, well…” Emma’s reply died on her lips as it finally sunk in that this is what she had to lose -- this easy banter, Killian’s eyes shining with it even now. He seemed to realize it at the same time, nudging the door gently shut behind him and taking two cautious steps toward her until they were toe to toe.

“You didn’t know, did you?” he asked softly.

“We’ve barely known each other a week, Killian. Of course I didn’t know.” Then the way he had said it hit her. “But you knew, didn’t you? How the hell long…”

“A day. Maybe slightly more.” He ran a hand up and through his hair, pinkie tapping at a spot just behind his ear where she could just barely make out a small grouping of silver hairs.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “We’ve--”

“The older you are,” he cut in, “the faster the signs start to show. It’s magic, Emma. It doesn’t have to justify itself to us.” He sounded so ready to just give in to the inevitability of it, to let the reality of what they were overshadow everything else, and something in her chest caved at the sound of his voice because she so, so wanted to let him.

“No,” she said. Her voice was shaking audibly as she denied him this, as something in his eyes fell away while his expression remained solid, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “This isn’t allowed to happen. I’m locked in for a hundred lifetimes already, and I can’t put another person...Killian, I can’t do that to you. To me. You can’t do it to you. Fuck, and your brother…”

“Swan,” he took another step, his hand making calming, stroking gestures in the air as if to soothe a wild animal. “We don’t get to pick, love. You know that as well as I do.”

“Killian, we can’t. There’s no future here. You have to know that.”

“Emma.” He closed the final space between them, reaching up to cup her face in his palms, one thumb rubbing a gentle line across her cheekbone. His eyes were soft, too much in their depths to pull apart in this tangled moment. “Swan. I’ve been waiting three hundred years for a wrinkle or a grey hair or something to tell me life was capable of changing for me. And I know the circumstances are…”

“Gold’s going to kill one or both of us, and you know it,” Emma cut in.

“And though the circumstances are challenging,” he continued, “I’m not willing to give this up because of what if’s. I want this, Emma. And I want it with you. With every piece of you, knives to my neck and guns to my head and all.”

“You barely even know me,” she protested, but it was weak in the face of his certainty, and she still hadn’t pulled away.

“I know you’ve got enough donut shop napkins in your glove compartment to indicate a small addiction.” He offered her a happy, boyish smile, and she couldn’t help the way her eyes softened at the expression. “I know you like lagers, and I know you’re more invested than you should be in Spongebob Squarepants’ milkshake license. I know you like knives for their concealability but guns for their practicality, and I know you could survive a zombie apocalypse on what you have stashed under your bed alone.” He leaned forward, his nose skimming hers and their foreheads resting together as he breathed, “I know you won’t let yourself want this, but I also know that I plan to spend a blissfully mortal lifetime making the world turn out its pockets for you because you got screwed.”

She laughed softly, the sound dancing between them, and damn her soulmate was good with words.

“You’re going to have a hell of a time keeping us alive that long.” She could hear the surrender in her own voice, and by the smile on Killian’s face, so could he.

“Well then it’s a good thing I like a challenge,” he said, and then he closed the final distance between them.

It felt like lifetimes since Emma had been kissed, but what she remembered was nothing like this. This was soft and gentle, years of waiting finally come to an end, but there was a hunger beneath it that settled low in her stomach. One of Killian’s hands rose to knot in her hair, and the other fell to her lower back, pressing her closer. She went willingly, arms wrapping around his neck and fingers tangling in the soft hair at the base of his skull. The dim room felt warm and close, the two of them the only people in this world made of soft light and the white noise of tires humming against the road outside, and in that moment Emma forgot all the risks. She forgot about Gold and that one of them was probably going to end up dead, forgot about the hit, forgot about the years and years where hope wasn’t an option, and gave herself up to Killian.

They pulled away at the same time, both too soon, and lingered in each other’s space a moment longer. Killian’s fingers brushed up and down her spine, the touch both intimate and casual, and of everything she had ever hated Gold for, Emma was starting to hate him the most for taking this away before it had even begun.

“You know this can’t turn into anything,” she said finally, pulling back properly and taking one big step back.

“Emma…” Killian hadn’t moved, still standing where she’d left him, hand still suspended to trace the shape of a phantom body.

“No, Killian.” Her voice rose in volume, an edge of anger there as hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes. It wasn’t fair -- none of this was fair. “How would that look? How would making this work long-term actually look?” She pointed harshly in the direction of the bathroom, willing him to remember the night he had come here, bullet in his side the least of the perils of this life. “You know what we do. You know who we work for. With him standing between this being a possibility and not, do you really want to have to make that choice?”

“I’ve already made it.” The certainty in his voice chilled her to her bones, not because she didn’t want it, but because she did and couldn’t.

“Don’t be stupid, Killian. Think about this. Gold is going to find out eventually -- he’s bound to. When we both start getting older at the same time, you think he’s not going to figure it out?” She waited until he nodded slowly before plowing on. “And then what? You know he wouldn’t let us stay together and age out of our deals before our debts are paid, and you know those debts are more than just one lifetime long. So the way I see it, everyone we’ve been trying to protect all these years becomes leverage, and one of us is going to have to kill the other to stay young, to keep working right up till the end.”

“We could…” Killian started, but trailed off as he realized what Emma already had -- that there was nothing they could do.

“And then...” Emma said softly, gently, because she knew the idea of three hundred more years alone was hurting him. Because she could tell by the hardening of his expression that he would agree to kill her so at least one of them would be free.

She wasn’t about to let him, because she was going to do the same.

“And then,” she continued, “Whoever’s left is going to have to take on your debt too, keep your family safe, because that’s the least they can do.”

He caught on instantly. “You’re not doing that,” he said firmly. “It’s me or nobody. You deserve--”

“I deserve to know I did something worthwhile for once in my goddamn life.” She reached out and took his hand again, knitting their fingers together and looking down at them instead of at him. “You’ve got two people to protect, Killian. I have...more than that. And you’ve been in this long enough.”

He didn’t say anything more for several long moments, bringing their joined hands up and pressing his lips against her knuckles. When she looked up at him she could see him thinking, and when his gaze eventually locked with hers, the blue of his eyes was soft but deep with resolve.

“Then we kill Gold,” he said.

She laughed a little, the sound half-strangled and incredulous.“What?”

“If someone has to go in order for this to work, I vote him. I don’t want to have to compromise, Emma. I don’t want one of us to have to leave the other to an eternity of killing soulmate after soulmate to continue drowning in debt. I want to live, and I want you to live, and I want us to live -- actually live, and not hop from job to job -- and I want it to be together.”

“He runs a business built of assassins, Killian. We’d never leave the office…” We’d never leave the office alive, she was about to say. But what if they didn’t have to enter the office in the first place?

Gold never told any of his assassins where his house was, never let any hint drop about where it was that he was most vulnerable. Except for one.

“Middle of the night at the house,” she said, a true smile spreading across her face as it all became possible. “I know how to get in. I know where he’ll be.” She’d thought about it before, of course, but seven-figure debt and a long list of people who needed protecting had always stood in her way. But with someone else’s loved ones on the line, with someone else on the line, and with what could be a future standing on the other side, the plan practically formed itself. And she was all in.

“And you’re sure about this?”

“Yes.” Her smile turned wicked and she loved the irony as she said, “I hope you got the rifle out of the ceiling.”

It was only fair that the gun meant for Gold’s soulmate would do the job.

Killian’s answering grin was brilliant, his eyes glittering in the dim light. “One final hit,” he promised.

She finished his sentence easily, the future finally stretching before her in a long, shining road whose end she could finally see. “Together.”

#cs fic rec #cs ff rec #cs ff #cs fic #captain swan #i write things

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