Bedevilment
Try to hear my voice
You can leave, now it's your choice
Maybe if I fall asleep, I won't breathe right
Maybe if I leave tonight, I won't come back
I said it before, I won't say it again
Love is a game to you, it's not pretend
Maybe if I fall asleep, I won't breathe right
Can nobody hear me?
I've got a lot that's on my mind
I cannot breathe
Can you hear it, too?
Chapter One
An Ill-Mannered Greeting
The banner read West Emmbrook Farmer's Market, and it was wildly misleading. 'Farmer's Market' implied fresh produce, outstanding craftsmanship and baked goods that would make grandma positively keel over in delight. It implied a whirlwind of colors, scents, faces and sounds.
It did not imply half a dozen dodgy-looking stalls with dodgier-looking people slumping behind the counters, their faces all identical masks of jaded 'I-wish-I-wasn't-here'.
Leah eyed a rather sad-looking batch of scorched biscuits with disdain. "How much for one?" she asked hesitantly, after awkwardly making eye contact with the stall keeper.
The scraggly-looking woman punching numbers into the till glanced down and sighed. "Five pounds for two. Can't buy just one. Fresh out of the oven, they are." Her forehead was beaded with sweat and her green eyes, bright though they were, were mostly obscured by a heavy black unibrow coming down low over her face.
"Oh. I'll be coming back, then?" Like hell she was.
The woman exhaled again, sharper this time. "That's what they all say." She picked up one of her burned cookies and bit into it, chewing mournfully.
Leah flashed her a reassuring, if somewhat uncomfortable, smile, and walked away quickly.
There were probably a total of fifty people in the market, and all of them seemed to belong to one of two groups; beaming, portraiture families or cooing, ridiculously close couples. Leah belonged to neither, and felt sorely out of place. Her hand crept up subconsciously to wind its way into her thick cocoa-colored hair, cropped to just above her elbows and let loose to spill over her shoulder in a disorganized, somewhat spiky and very nest-like waterfall.
"Well, she was pleasant," a voice remarked cheerfully from behind her. "We haven't seen you in months, Reilly, where've you been?"
Leah stopped, grimaced and turned around.
"Go and bother someone else, Sean. I'm really not in the mood, believe it or not. You too, Kate," she said, snapping her words slightly less than she'd meant to.
Kate, a pixieish bleach-blond whose rhinestone-bedazzled sunglasses seemed to be permanently glued to her head, looked taken aback and clutched at the the thin, almost see-through material of her sky-blue sundress. Sean, taller than his twin and more muscular, just grinned and bounced up and down on the balls of his bare feet.
"Come on, Lee, don't be such a bloody stick in the mud. Just buy something, or at least pretend you can tolerate us in the slightest." He made a wide sweeping gesture at the poorly-made sculptures, knick-knacks and decorations that he stood behind.
Sean and Kate Thomas were former high school classmates of Leah's. The three of them, along with about half a dozen other kids from their town, had all gone to the international boarding-or-day-students school in Central London, making the three-hour commute there and back each day. Sean and Kate were two identical examples of the subspecies of human beings that never harbor any desire whatsoever to leave the town of their birth, ever, for anything. Sean was a self-proclaimed surfer by trade, even though Emmbrook was nowhere near the ocean; as far as Leah knew, he did nothing but inspect his spiky, gelled blond hair, flex his biceps and faithfully devour romance novels aimed at teenage girls, one after the other. Kate was a female copy of him; she did all of the above that her brother did, right down to flexing her nonexistent bicep muscles. They were not Leah's favorite people to run into on a decent Saturday morning, where the clouds stood awkwardly in the sky but didn't have enough courage to even threaten to rain.
Leah gave him a tight-lipped smile. "Not worth pretending," she said curtly, holding up her nails to inspect them, as though this threw up some sort of invisible barrier between her and the twins. God, her cuticles looked terrible.
Sean sniggered and Kate followed suite. "Oh, I forgot, Kate," he mocked, nonchalantly leaning down to adjust a crude tea mug with a cliched slogan etched onto the front, something about attitude and how yours was wrong in every way. "The great and powerful Leah Reilly doesn't deign to lower herself to walk amongst the commoners."
Kate barked a laugh, then paused, a bemused look crossing her face. "Wait... Are we commoners?"
Sean pinched the bridge of his nose and threw a look towards Leah that said, "Jeez, can you believe her? So embarrassing that we're related." as though they were sharing some private joke and he hadn't just been insulting her.
"What happened to you, Leah? You used to be cool."
There's a big difference between 'cool' and 'total airhead'.
"I went to college."
"Got that right." Sean nudged his sister in the ribs and chuckled. "You cut your hair, your accent is different, you're using different words. You're a... a nerd now!" He laughed again.
Leah raised her eyebrow and took one slow, calculating step towards the counter, and in one smooth motion pushed the mug out of Sean's loosened grip, letting it tumble to the floor and shatter. His almost flirty expression evaporated immediately, making way for a furious glare and a mouth that was struggling to form a coherent sentence, shaping the words but never saying them.
"Oops," she hissed slowly, never breaking eye-contact. "I'm pissed off, I have to tell you, but here, let me pay for that." With an unnecessary flick of her wrist, she dug a five-pound note out of her purse and slapped it into Sean's palm. He started and Leah simpered, giving a little humph of satisfaction.
Feeling far too pleased with herself, she turned to flounce away. Behind her back, she barely heard Kate's distasteful whisper. One word, but it hit Leah in the back like a blunt knife, digging into her ribs. "Bitch."
Her first instinct was to whirl, aim and ignite an onslaught of abuses that would make Kate's permed hair turn white in horror. Instead, she restrained herself, choosing to turn slowly on her heel, stiff-legged, measuring her words out carefully.
Leah stared at Kate hard, causing the blond girl to drop her gaze down to her hands, clenched tight.
Leah clicked her tongue sympathetically. "Look, Katy, I'll try to use small words so you can understand, okay? Yes, I am a bitch - it's very nice of you to notice. But I'm a bitch with a bloody master's degree in sociology. I'm twenty-three years old and just about to move into a flat in central London. In fact, I got back from the US last night, and just stopped home to get my things before I move out for good, unlike you, you vacuous bimbo. Now - jeez, how to put this delicately? Go bugger yourself."
Kate gasped and put a hand over her heart, perhaps theatrically, but probably genuinely, stunned into silence. She looked as though she was about to have a haemorrhage; but that was probably just her small brain trying to formulate a comeback. Leah waited patiently, arms crossed, vaguely interested to see what the flighty girl was going to say. Sean stared at her and then at his sister, starting when he saw a vein bulge out of Kate's forehead as she strained to compute.
"So... So... you wanna buy something?" Kate finally asked, looking as though her memory had been completely wiped. "We've got... cows." Kate held up a small ceramic cow, shoddily painted to resemble the Statue of Liberty. "Made it myself." She gave a weak smile.
Leah put a hand to her mouth to cover her grin. God, she's an idiot. "Yeah, no, I'm looking for something specific."
Immediately, Sean was a businessman. "What you looking for? We've got lots of stuff." It was like the last two minutes had never happened. Leah shrugged, deciding quickly to go with it; you couldn't argue with two people whose collective IQ was smaller than her shoe size.
"Don't suppose you have any Scrabble sets?" she asked, trying to sound innocent.
"Lemme check." Sean took his sweet time pulling a ledger from below the counter, flipping through it with the air of someone who had all the time in the world. "Scrabble... Scrabble... Oh, yeah. Kate, get box seven, it's got some old-time gamey stuff of Mum's." As Kate scurried to the back of the small tent, Sean leaned forward, looking decidedly disinterested. "Oi, Leah, who's this for anyways? You never struck me as the kind of person who spent her Friday evenings playing Scrabble, Bingo, Monopoly, you know..."
"This is for someone else. You wouldn't know him. Remember high school? He and I had the same History, Physics and Calculus classes. He was kind of obsessed with the game." In truth, the guy had only mentioned Scrabble once or twice, but she remembered it as a quirky enough topic of conversation to be the only memorable thing about him. "I might be working with him soon."
"Name?"
"None of your bloody business."
Sean smirked. "He your boyfriend?"
Leah scoffed, a scornful note. "Well, it's nice to see that the guys in this town haven't changed one bit."
Kate stumbled back, interrupting her, staggering under the weight of a cardboard box that was almost as large as she was. "Gottit, Sean," she mumbled, her voice muffled behind the crate.
"Jesus H. Christ, Kate, I didn't mean the whole box - watch it!" He leaped forward to catch his sister as she tripped over her own feet and the box nearly went flying, its contents shuddering in their places. He took the box and plopped it down on the counter, narrowly avoiding shattering more than a few tasteless plates. "There. Whatever you want, take a look."
Leah leaned forward, arms folded over her chest. It was hard to tell, but most of what was in box seven seemed to be useless junk. A few scrolls with badly-brushed calligraphy, a couple vials of what appeared to be some sort of squid ink and a couple embroidered pillows. Nothing special. Wait - she turned one of the pillows over, holding back a sneeze as a small cloud of dust rose up.
The pillow itself was tacky enough, a puke-beige sort of color, with the kind of frayed, tasseled edges that were supposed to look good, but didn't. It was small, only slightly bigger than her hand. And, more importantly, it had a giant 'A' stitched onto the front of it. A '1' was to the left and below the letter, like an afterthought that had almost been forgotten. It was close enough.
"I need eight."
"Ooh, specific. Any particular letters?"
"Yes." She grinned wickedly.
~:~:~§~:~:~
Q stumbled through the front door, hanging onto the door frame for support. It had been far too long a day for his liking, what with Bond nearly blowing himself up, once again. He dragged himself down the short flight of stairs leading to his small living room and collapsed on the hard black couch, deflating his chest in a sigh of relief
It was good to be home.
After a few minutes of staring at his ceiling blankly, he rolled off the seat and ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head.
"I have to go on vacation." Smiling sheepishly at nothing in particular, he moved into the bedroom. Narrowed his eyes. Moved a step forward, regarding what was in front of him. Slowly, as though afraid it might sit up and bite him, picked up the white envelope that was lying patiently on his bedspread. Glanced up once more, frowning.
S1 C3 R1 E1 W4 Y4 O1 U1
The eight pillows leaned blatantly against the plain wooden headboard. He raised an eyebrow and tore the envelope open, reading quickly.
Dearest... 'Q',
Hope you're still into Scrabble, otherwise I think my greeting would be far less poignant. Hope you liked it, by the way. Be a shame if you didn't; I took quite a lot of time looking for just the right touch. Perhaps it a little ruder than you're used to receiving, but I thought it necessary. You know, just a little payback for high school.
You remember those years, I hope. Not too fond of them, myself, and I don't suppose you are either. Yes, you were the computer nerd, and I was, as hard as I try to forget it, the stereotypical 'popular girl'; bubbly, short and dumb beyond belief. I wasn't an idiot; I realized in middle school that you couldn't be smart and popular, so I went - to put this into terms you would understand - undercover, playing along for years, and it was exhausting. Unlike so many people, I realized that the common human being absolutely adores being right, especially when they aren't, and tend to want to be around idiotic people who make them feel 'right'. So I became that idiotic person.
But maybe you recall that one time in Year 11, where we were in some of the same classes, and I proved you wrong in that genetic engineering debate? It was a mistake, but your logic was so flawed that I couldn't help myself. One of the highlights of my life, I can tell you that, seeing the look on your face. Yeah, I realize you probably don't have a clue as to what I'm talking about. But I, at least, have a vivid memory of what you said to me after class. Something along the lines of, "Reilly, you think you're so funny, trampling over my presentation. But I can tell you now, you'll never amount to anything more than a minuscule tea stain on the face of the world's history. Harridan." (Nice choice of insulting word, by the way.) I think the evil laugh you added afterwards was a product of my imagination. Admittedly, I was scathing in my retort to your speech in the debate, but I took pride in that and will not apologize.
You might recall I my reply, too. "Listen, I'd love to see things from your point of view, but I can't shove my head that far up my ass." Hopefully, that stung a little.
I thought I'd let you know, since it's unlikely that we'll be catching up over coffee anytime soon, that I am a college graduate, aged twenty-three, and about to start work. Where? Same place as you, so I don't think I need mention it by name. That's right: that minuscule tea stain is about to start working in the same place the high and mighty 'Q' does. How do I know you work there? Let's just say my ex-boyfriend was a hacker of the highest quality; not harmful in any way, but I could play him for information like a cello. Not that I play the cello, but I think you might just be smart enough to understand it's a figure of speech.
By the way, you might be wondering how I got into your apartment. My explanation is thus: I have one older brother, now in the military, who locked me in the garage a lot when we were kids. I had to learn to get out somehow, and picking the lock was the obvious solution.
Let's not forget that I know your real name. Now, I'm not that much of an asshole that I'll address you by it and compromise your safety (believe it or not, I do have my limits), but mark me when I say I will be holding it over your head if I ever feel the need to.
Hope you're well. Nice weather we're having for this time of year, isn't it?
Cheers,
Leah Reilly
P.S. You might think this is a long time to be bitter over what you might perceive as a minor incident, but there's one thing you should about us harridans: we're characteristically resentful and hang onto grudges like nerds (e.g. you) hang onto their virginity.
See you at work.
Q groaned and ground the notepaper into his palm. He remembered Leah Reilly. Too well. He remembered thinking that she was a shrew who thought she had it all. He had always thought that she and her little group of clones would be the type to get pregnant just before graduation or marry rich, and do nothing with their lives. And now she was going to be working alongside him.
Wait. On the record, he had it written down that he worked for Guidewire Software. Perhaps she thought that was where he was actually working? That had to be it.
He smiled to himself and threw the letter into the dustbin next to his bed. Gathering up the pillows, he pushed them to the back of his closet.
Leah Reilly, ex-school ditz and all around virago, was not coming to work at MI6.
~:~:•:~:~
A/N: New fic! That's pretty good, right? Anyways, hopefully you liked the first chapter. Thanks for reading, and please review if you liked/loved/hated/meh'ed/sat on this story so far. Super big thanks to my beta, Starcrier, for the incredibly helpful editing tips. The song at the beginning was Imagine Dragons' 'Hear Me'.
LOLZ, Less Than Three, Winky-Face-Things, etc.,
MockingjayWolf