A/N: Ok, so this is definitely my post-'Life is what we make of it' (see AO3 for that one) rebound fic. Finishing that one has completely messed with my writing mojo, making it impossible to plan out in detail any other story. The idea for this one is one of many I've had sitting in my notes for a while, and there are still a few frustrations with it to iron out, but hopefully if I throw my usual writing routine to the wind and just post the first chapter of this one, the mojo and inspiration will come back and the ball will start rolling.

Let's see where this goes, shall we?

An unexpected knocking on Aram's front door, jolted him from his laptop. He looked up from the couch, furrowing his brow in confusion in the general direction of the door, and wondering who on earth would be stopping by when the clock in the corner of his laptop screen told him that it was barely thirteen minutes shy of midnight. Aram shuffled across the apartment, warily pulling open the front door.

His eyes widened in a split second of terror at the sight of the woman who stood there.

Aram knew that face. It was the face he had tried to alert his team to when he had stumbled across it earlier in the day and realised who it belonged to. It was a face framed by wild, dark curls, and bearing fierce, dark brown eyes that felt like their gaze drilled into his skull.

And most importantly in that moment, it was a face that was decidedly not happy to see him.

The woman stepped forwards before Aram could even try to fight back, pushing her way through the door and allowing it to fall closed behind her, then bundling him up against the wall, with her forearm across his neck. She didn't even reach for the sidearm Aram could see bulging at her hip under her coat but then again, she really didn't need to. She was powerful and intimidating enough without it.
'Who are you?' She hissed. Dark eyes glinted at him in frustration and suspicion, effectively silencing any instinct Aram had to call out for help.
'Ar-' he began to stutter, squirming against her grasp, 'um, Aram Mojtabai-'
'CIA?' The dark haired woman fired off her next round of furious questioning, 'NSA?' Aram blinked before responding, his voice shaking as he finally spoke;
'F-FBI.'

That answer was apparently unsatisfactory.

The woman's grasp slipped down to the front of his shirt, pulling Aram off the wall, dragging him across the room and throwing him into one of his own dining chairs. She was fast and systematic in her approach; before Aram could even blink, his wrists were being tied behind his back, and his ankles to the chair legs. He didn't fight back; Aram could see easily that he wouldn't stand a chance against the woman who was clearly all too well trained. Trying and failing to fight back would only result in some kind of unspeakable pain, whereas... Being tied to a chair wasn't one hundred percent comfortable, but wasn't anywhere near as bad as the alternative. Finally, the woman stood back, glaring at him with her jaw clenched in frustration.
'Why is the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigating me?' She seethed.
'It's not,' Aram insisted, 'I'm not.'

Those dark eyes continued studying him with an intensity as fiery as the name of the woman they belonged to, making Aram's own widen in fear. The woman in front of him was not the subject of any open Bureau investigation that Aram knew of, but he had found her in the background of some security footage he had trawled through earlier in the day for another case and tried to identify her, believing at first that she was a witness. Needless to say, he had been wrong. Running facial recognition had pulled up a series of mismatching, partial identities and odd travel patterns, which had sent him down a rabbit's warren of searching for connections. Trying to identify her had been a far more complex puzzle than the usual matching of a face to a driver's license, and that only meant one thing; she was staying off the grid and covering her tracks for some reason.

Looking into that further, rather than focusing on the case at hand, had unravelled far too many patterns for Aram not to conclude that she was The Phoenix. The only problem with that however, was that most of law enforcement thought that The Phoenix was a myth -the sort of mysterious assassin they attributed any unsolved murder to, just because they didn't know what else to do.

But, The Phoenix wasn't a myth. The lore that floated around criminal circles was that The Phoenix was trained by Mossad but went rogue years earlier for reasons unknown, eventually becoming one of the most effective assassins one could hire. Her alleged kills were spread further apart in time than that of the average assassin, with no link in the MO besides the fact that they were meticulous. Each one was different, staged as gang shootings, muggings gone wrong, suicides, mysterious disappearances, or whatever else seemed most applicable to the given target so that it didn't look like a hit. Only whispers through the criminal underworld gave rise to any idea to the contrary, and none of them offered anything that could help identify her. The Phoenix was faceless, nameless, and consistently uncatchable in the way she spaced out her kills by spending an agonising amount of time carefully studying each target and then going to ground for a while before taking on the next.

There was only one other factor that was common in every rendition of The Phoenix's lore; that she only targeted those who hurt others first.

The idea that she was real had intrigued Aram all day... Until now. Now, she was standing right there in front of him, turning her attention from him to opening up his laptop on the table and tapping away at the keyboard, trying to figure out what he knew, all the while Aram was not so much intrigued anymore, as utterly terrified.

She was lethal, she was ruthless, and he had no idea what she was about to do to him.

'You pinged four of my aliases,' The Phoenix muttered as she typed, 'aliases that nobody has linked in the better part of a decade-' she paused, lifting her gaze just long enough from the screen to raise a single, disbelieving eyebrow '-and that's not investigating me?' Aram hesitated as he met her gaze.
'It was more of an accident,' he began warily, 'I came across them while investigating someone else and happened to make the connection-'
'-And you didn't report that to your superiors?' She asked, quickly cutting him off. Her expression was still disbelieving; the truth as Aram knew it, was one that was merely coincidental and one that she was unlikely to believe and yet... There was little else he could tell her.
'I tried,' Aram insisted, desperately now, 'they wouldn't listen, they told me to dismiss it. They all think you're a myth.' The Phoenix narrowed her eyes, studying him carefully again. Her voice was slow and dangerously suspicious as she replied;
'Why should I believe you?'

That was the question that echoed in Aram's ears more than any other. What else could he say to answer it and make her believe him?

/*/*/*/*

Still tied to his own dining chair, Aram eyed the intruder to his apartment, who was still alternating between pacing back and forth, asking questions, and doing something with his laptop that he couldn't see. The Phoenix was calmer now; not entirely calm, but certainly less ferocious than she had been when she had first pushed her way through the door perhaps an hour earlier. If anything, the anger had simply been replaced with suspicion and an air of being conflicted, like she had figured out for herself that Aram wasn't the threat she had first thought he was, but now didn't know what to do with him.

She was on edge; perhaps Aram wasn't investigating her, but he did know who she was… And that was a problem.

Aram on the other hand, was also a little calmer. Guaranteed he too, was not entirely calm either, but the fact that despite being tied to a chair and interrogated, The Phoenix still hadn't technically inflicted any pain on him, had Aram a least slightly less terrified than he had been. The hesitation was still there -to the point that his shoulders were still slightly raised in fear and unlikely to lower any time soon- but now the curiosity of having discovered her earlier in the day, was back with a bang. He was calmer enough now that he had some sense of awareness of things beyond the fact that a ruthless assassin had him tied to a chair. The fact that despite her intimidating demeanour, she was actually quite beautiful had certainly caught his attention by now, as had how tall she was. But what had him most concerned now, strangely enough, was that The Phoenix also seemed to be sick. Dark, tired circles sat heavy under her eyes, and if Aram listened carefully over the sound of her tapping away at his keyboard, he could hear intermittent sniffling and rattling in her breathing. More noticeable was the cough he heard when The Phoenix turned her head away from him between questions every so often.

Aram estimated that she had the particularly nasty cold that was going around, or perhaps even the flu. It was something that once Aram noticed, he couldn't un-notice it. Tied there in a chair, in the silence of nothing but occasional keyboard taps, there wasn't much he could do but watch her and flinch at each cough as she stood there, going through his digital files. The Phoenix however, seemed determined not to let her sickness drag her down, gritting her teeth and stubbornly keeping her head down as she worked, almost as if refusing to acknowledge the congestion in her sinuses would make it magically go away. Shoulders still raised in nervousness and wondering whether or not he should address it at all, Aram spoke up;
'How long have you been coughing like that?' He asked, his voice barely inaudible. The Phoenix furrowed her brow in confusion as to why he would ask such a thing, but her gaze stayed firmly focused on the laptop screen in front of her.
'A week or so,' she murmured. Aram bit his lip.
'I have some lozenges,' he quietly spoke up again, 'they're not great but you can try them if you want-' he paused, eyeing her warily for a moment before continuing '-or there's tea in the kitchen, and honey too. That could help.'

Finally, The Phoenix glanced up from the laptop screen, turning her gaze to him. He look on her face was suspicious now and she eyed him for a moment, almost frustratedly. A breath caught in Aram's throat.

'Are you trying to convince me to leave the room again so you can escape?' The Phoenix asked drily.
'Actually…' Aram stammered back, eyes wide, 'I was just trying to be nice.'
'Why would you be nice to me?' All traces of suspicion were gone from The Phoenix's voice, in favour of confusion. For one, she had him tied to a chair, and secondly... She spent so many years living off the grid, lurking in the shadows alone with little to no other human contact beside the limited communication with clients and targets, the concept of anyone being nice to her seemed borderline foreign by now, let alone the concept of someone who she had tied to a chair being nice to her. Aram hesitated at the question -the Phoenix's own confusion over niceness only serving to confuse him in turn.
'I try to be nice to everyone.' He internally braced himself as he spoke, wary and wondering if it was some kind of trick question. The Phoenix however, simply blinked, apparently awaiting some kind of follow up. Still wary, Aram furrowed his brow and gritted his teeth, thinking back to every story he had heard of The Phoenix, and trying to add some level of conviction to his voice that would convince her. 'And because… You only kill the people who hurt other people, the ones that get away with it because they cover their tracks. Law enforcement can't take them down, but you can.' Somehow, it came easier to him than Aram had expected. The stories of her exploits had resonated with him somehow, in a way he couldn't quite explain. 'The tea will help with your throat, really.' The Phoenix pursed her lips together. Her eyes crinkled slightly, almost amused by him, as she turned them back to the computer screen. In all honesty, she wasn't entirely sure what to make of him. On one hand, her immediate instinct was to question everyone's intentions and not to trust anyone, but on the other hand... She was as intrigued by him as he was by her. Nobody had ever managed to track her before -and it had been years since anyone had ever actually thought to offer her tea.
'Your search isn't wide enough,' The Phoenix murmured, rather than keeping with the topic of the cough she was trying to pretend didn't exist. Against his better judgement, Aram tried not to think back to the search that had resulted in finding her in the first place... The search, that he was planning to run in further detail the next morning to find out even more about her again.
'What search?' The attempt at an oh so innocent voice was a dismal failure, and the slight crack in his tone only served to cause The Phoenix's lip to curl into a smirk.
'The one that pinged four of my aliases all in a row once you found one and ran it against the various databases,' she mused, then paused to turn her head sideways and cough back into her shoulder. Aram flinched at the sound; that cough was a particularly raspy one. Regardless, The Phoenix turned straight back again to continue as if she hadn't even stopped; 'you only ran my identity against airport border controls when you looked for patterns.'
'So?'
'So, I have different identities for each different form of border control; air, sea, road, train, and so on. I never overlap them. The few times I've ever been compromised, they only catch one set, while the others remain in tact because you all make the same mistake.' The Phoenix glanced back at him, an almost smug smile tugging at her lips. 'Then I can keep moving, just using a different form of transport, until I create new identities to replace the old ones. I'm never trapped.'
'If you don't want me investigating you, why would you tell me that?' Aram asked, in what felt like the umpteenth wary question of the night. The smug smile on The Phoenix's face seemed to widen.
'You said you weren't investigating me.'
'I'm not.'
'And I'm not the only one who uses that tactic so they can't be tracked or caught,' she quipped. 'Remember that the next time you investigate someone else,' she added, finally allowing Aram's laptop to fall softly closed again on the table beside him. She paused again, tilting her head to eye him there for a moment like a cat trying to figure out how best to toy with a mouse before letting it free for another round of chasing. 'Consider it me being… Nice.'

The word felt strange as it rolled from her tongue and then hung in the air between them, but she left it there regardless.

'So… You're not going to kill me?' Aram's eyes widened slightly. It felt like he was getting away with something far too easily.
'Not today.' The Phoenix's lip quirked up, then she ducked behind his chair to untie his wrists. 'But I am going to order you to stay in this chair for fifteen minutes after I leave, without touching your phone, your laptop, or any other method of communication.' The Phoenix stood back for a moment, a wry smile beginning to etch its way across her face as she eyed the free hands itching to reach down to the still-tied ankles, but forcing themselves to sit still on his knees. A second later, and she marched the few steps across the room towards the hallway to leave.
'Wait,' Aram called out to her, craning his neck to see further than the chair would allow him to. 'What's your name?' The Phoenix ducked her head back around the doorway between the living room and the hallway, peering in at him.

'I thought you knew that one already,' she mused, giving a nonchalant shrug. 'But you can call me Samar.'

She ducked back around the doorway, vanishing into the darkness of the hallway. A moment later, and Aram heard the sound of his front door closing behind her.

As ordered, he waited the fifteen minutes before lurching forwards to untie his ankles and then dart across the room to stare out through the window across the street. Not one thing outside appeared to be moving at all.

The Phoenix was gone.