Disclaimer: I do not own Human Target and intend no copyright infringement.
Half an hour had passed and she was still sitting at the office's kitchen table, staring off into space, occasionally sipping at the Bourbon Winston had poured her prior to the confession. "Trust me, you'll need it", he had said.
Truer words had never been spoken.
"You're going to help her, aren't you?" Baptiste asked quietly, watching her from the conference room. "I've tried… but… I've never done it the other way around, you know?"
Chance remembered all too well having said something similar, once upon a time. I've only ever played offense… And he also remembered well which role Baptiste had had in that particular situation. "This is about her, not him", he reminded himself. Fighting hard to keep the edge out of his voice, he replied: "If she lets us."
"You've got to talk to her, dude", Guerrero stated, leaning against one of the glass walls, stirring his tea, seemingly unperturbed by his former colleague's sudden appearance.
As Baptiste sat down opposite from her again, she took a larger sip from the Bourbon. "When the serial killer I had helped to put behind bars had broken out of prison and killed five of my colleagues, two of them in Scotland Yard's own safe houses, sending me on a multi-year flight across three continents, I really thought things couldn't get worse."
She tried to take another large sip, but the glass was almost empty.
"And now the only good thing about this whole catastrophe, the one person that kept me this side of sane for the past few months, the man I've fallen in love with… turns out to be a professional assassin, on the run after breaking out of a prison in Russia."
Baptiste slightly tilted his head.
"The man you've fallen in love with?", he repeated cautiously.
Groaning, she buried her face in her hands.
Back in the conference room Guerrero put a hand on Chance's shoulder.
AN: Thank you, opal, for leaving a comment on self-defense! I'll try to write more Chance/Ilsa, but my plot bunnies pretty much do what they want, I've got no control over them whatsoever, as the fic above illustrates... Unruly little things...
