Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. Except Sades? Because no one in their right minds would come up with her. Also, the title? Credited to Turn on Billie by The Pierces. Who are ten different sorts of awesome? Yeah. Go listen to them, like, yesterday.

Paint the Town Blue

The Monongahela/Ohio/Allegheny – whatever river was disgusting.

It was one of those things that were just common knowledge, no matter where you came from. Sadie Ricarddi tried to ignore a dead fish floating a little ways away. Shut her eyes and tried to pretend that it hadn't been glowing.

How far away was Three Mile Island?

Sadie shuddered at what she was about to do. Grit her teeth and breathed in deeply through her nose. Then she kicked violently at the water and dove, adjusting herself in the murky water and diving deeper before straightening out so she could move faster.

In front of her was the Pittsburgh skyline, lights bright and beckoning against the dark sky. Brighter still were the lights aimed at 'The' fountain, the sound of the water flowing loud but welcoming in the darkness. She could hear cars if she listened close enough, hear them all around her – to the front, the back, and above her.

She reached the Point and latched onto the cold cement, so smooth and worn that it was more like marble. It was cold and slick and her arms buckled underneath her weight several times but she eventually hauled herself onto it and rolled away from the edge before stopping and just lying there, cheek pressed to marble-cement. Watched the lights of the incline as they moved up and down the side of the mountain.

Forty-six feet. It was a long way to fall, an even longer way to be pushed. She had blacked out at the impact; gasped and inhaled more water than she had ever drank before. She didn't have any training in… anything.

Every inch of her body hurt as she finally rolled to her feet, checked her joints and blinked several times to see if her vision would get any clearer. When it didn't, she swore and rolled her shoulders back in her shirt, trying to warm herself up.

It didn't work, to say the least.

Sadie steeled her nerves and began walking down the bank of the river. Pittsburgh was a big city, even bigger when it was the middle of the night and you were getting hypothermia, but she should have been able to make it back to her apartment before too long. Sadie blinked down at her watch and found that it was more than a little after eleven, wondering only once she had let her wrist drop back to her side if the watch had stopped when she'd gotten it wet. Thought belatedly of the phone she had in the pocket of her cargo pants, further down her leg, and if it had been a waste of money.

She ducked under the overpass and out of the breeze when she reached it. It was deathly silent, every being in the city carefully hidden away in their apartments sleeping, or working late into the night in their office buildings or biding their time in any of the other locations Pittsburgh had to offer. A bird startled somewhere above her and for a minute she toyed at the idea of crossing into the city and catching a cab. Toyed with the idea but never went about it, instead simply continuing on in a –semi- straight path.

Just when it started to feel like she had been walking and on-off sprinting forever – a glance at her watch showed that it had been just under an hour – she welcomed the curved architecture of Mellon Arena into her view. That was one of the good things about Pittsburgh. There were enough notable landmarks that, even in the middle of the night, you could find your way anywhere just by looking for them.

The one problem was, though, that most of the landmarks were enormous. Like Mellon Arena – there were several sprawling parking lots in just about every direction around the building, one after another. And only once she crossed those would she be able to even fantasize about her plush crème and black bed with her eight pillows.

She weaved through the cars that were still there, wondered briefly about the sleeping cycle of hockey fans and picked up her stride to a slow jog. She was so close to being home. Just across two more roads and if she cut through one of the alleyways she wouldn't have to even walk to the other side of the building and could just go through one of the side doors. It might have ticked just a couple of seconds off the total time it would take her to get to her apartment, but it was small victories in the dead of night that kept her going.

"You'll see stranger things," Sadie hissed towards someone who may or may not have been that one hockey player – what the fuck was his name? – when he gave her a curious glance as she brushed past him. Distracted herself and almost fell over one of those cement things that people parked in front of.

When she was able to see the café, that is if she looked between the buildings at the right angle and shut one eye, she sped up to a sprint. She jumped over one of the low alley gates and tripped over an empty box lying in the middle of the path. Then, squeezing between two cars that were parked in the street and dropped down on the road. A cab slid to a stop in the middle of the street when she started across the street and she flicked the driver off when he started yelling at her in some language that she didn't understand. Her tennis shoes were filled with water and they were making the run seem much longer and making it hard for her to move her legs.

They had to be because there was no way she had let herself fall out of shape enough to keep her from getting home from just The Point. She couldn't have been that tired. She had once run from the Washington Monument to her hotel in Bethesda, Maryland. The hotel that, she remembered with a grimace, was right next to a metro station. Felt a sharp stab of hatred towards the people she had been on a job with at that point in her life.

Sadie stepped into the café, the too cheery – for anytime, not just at two in the morning- bell ringing above her head and the sound remained in her ears even when it stopped. A puddle formed behind her, water absorbing quickly into The Coffee Stop's carpeting. Everyone turned to look at her and she grimaced at the sudden attention. "I'm having a really bad night." She announced loudly, not that she owed it to them to know. They stared at her for another second before mostly everyone turned back to what they were doing.

Sadie walked towards the counter, feeling smug. She had just jumped from the Fort Duquesne Bridge and hadn't broken anything, even if she felt bruised all over.

"Hey dollface," A redhead wearing a pair of blue pants and a shirt of the same color, toning down the too bright combination with a black vest that announced her name as 'Eliza' chirped at her. She walked around the counter and gave Sadie a hug. "You look horrible."

"Yeah, thanks." Sadie sighed, sliding into one of the stools at the counter and folding her arms.

Eliza clucked her tongue and grabbed the muffin platter, setting it in front of Sadie. "It's on the house."

Sadie looked at the muffins wearily. "Do we have food in the apartment?" She asked. They had been running out of snack food – or anything that took less than three minutes to make, anything more and she would have lost interest by the time it was finished – for a while and she didn't know if Eliza had been to the store or not yet.

Eliza rolled her eyes and replaced the tray further down the counter. "You really should get help for that,"

Sadie set her head on her chin and nodded. "I know," She smothered a yawn. "I'll deal with it tomorrow." She turned, walking towards the doors that would lead to a staircase that would, in turn, lead to her apartment.

"No you won't!" Eliza yelled after her.

Sadie laughed. "Good night, Liz."

Something dropped onto the back of her legs. Sadie immediately woke up, spinning under the warm, crème colored covers so that the object was resting on the front of her legs instead. It was a bundle of money, and she looked from the money to where Colton was standing in the doorway, lazily and languidly, like he actually belonged there.

She kept her eyes on him as she reached down to retrieve the money and only looked away to flick through it. She was halfway through when she knew and she looked back up to him. "What the fuck is this?" She tried to keep her voice level. Sadie Riccardi thrived on repressed emotion, and this was just another one to repress.

"Your cut."

Not her cut. "We settled on a hundred grand," She gripped the green money, complete with stringy rubber band, hard enough to bend it. "Not ten thousand."

Colton turned away and walked back into the main living space of the apartment, shooting back over his shoulder, "You get less when you almost mess everything up."

Sadie threw the covers back and jumped out of the bed, bounding into the kitchen after him. It was only when she had stopped by the counter that she realized her mistake. Her bed was warm, her apartment was not and the conversation they were about to have probably wouldn't be worth messing it all up. "I almost 'messed everything up' –" Actually threw up some air quotes. "- because the guys you put in charge of security detail were idiots!"

Colton laughed, tossing his head back with it. He laughed long enough to make her feel self conscious in her pajamas that consisted of a pair of Eliza's cheer shorts and a tank top that rode up on her stomach. "They did what they were told –"

Sadie grit her teeth. "You told them to-"

She wondered how people could stand being around Colton at all. Sadie was sure that she'd never be able to stand being around him or talking to him or even looking at him now that he seemed to be holding her one mess up above her head for the rest of the world to see and judge in everyone's own, special, critical way. The fact that he held so much of her future gave Colton an odd finality, one that she never thought any one person could or would possess. One she certainly didn't want involved in her life.

Sadie did not know Colton Lozak well, but what she knew she didn't like and no matter how much they worked together, it probably wouldn't change.

"I told them to look after you. It's not my fault you got mixed up and thought they were them and not the other way around." Even saying a grammatically incorrect sentence, though it made perfect sense to Sadie and probably anyone that had been on the surprisingly dark bridge with her, Colton's tone was vaguely patronizing.

"I don't need you," she reminded him. He took several steps towards her, looking to get around her, and she set her hands on her hips to make herself as wide as possible and keep him cornered.

She took it as a personal victory when his eye twitched.

But naturally, he took her bait and stayed in the stride of the conversation. "I'll make sure you never get a job again," he warned. He looked down at her, a feat that wasn't easy considering that, at five feet and eleven inches, Sadie was only three inches shorter than he was.

"Oh, I'm shaking in my boots," She pretended to shiver. It turned into a real one halfway through. Where was Eliza from and why did she insist on having the temperature turned down so far?

"Not only will you never get a job again, Sadie, you'll always be remembered as the girl that messed a job up so bad she was never able to get another one." Colton glared at her, absolutely threw daggers at her like some carnival sideshow attraction. Had it been someone else, she would have shrunken away.

As it was, she just shoved her shoulders back and ignored the sharp shoot of pain across her back. She probably had a bruise on her collarbone and wondered for a moment what she actually looked like hours after the incident. Should have thought of it before. "I'm shaking in my boots. Really, Colton." She assured him without a hint of sarcasm, though it was applied and she knew that he'd get her point.

He twitched again and Sadie was comforted by the gun she had on top of the refrigerator. Of course, if he had one on his person – which she knew he did – it would just be a lost cause trying to get it. He set his hand on her shoulder and pressed his thumb against her collarbone and she felt another sharp shoot of pain. Yeah, there was definitely a bruise there. The pain evened out to a soreness but Colton didn't move his hand, keeping it there and using the pain to help shove her aside.

Sadie fell a little off balance and turned with Colton but didn't make any move to stop him. Just watched him as he crossed the three feet to the door in about a stride and set his hand on the doorknob. Seemed to have an afterthought, and turned back to look at her. "What are you going to do, Sadie? Besides being able to make a bouncy ball disappear and reappear behind people's ears, the abilities on your list far from useful."

She thought mildly of reminding him of the restaurant they had gone to in Chicago when they had been there for a job. A magician had gone around to the tables and performed while the patrons had been waiting for their meals. They were probably paid by the restaurant as well as picking up tips throughout the night. She thought of it, but instead she said, "I'm tall and blonde. I don't need crime work to make money."

Colton grinned turning back to the door. "Maybe if you had blue eyes you would have gotten the hundred grand."

The walls were still ringing from the slam of the door and she glanced down and suddenly felt childishly self-conscious about her green eyes, even if they did turn an interesting color of brown just before they darkened into her pupil. Turned, took two steps and let herself fall face down onto the couch.

Authors Note! HI! Thanks so much for reading so far. It means a lot! Alright. So I don't know anything about Pittsburgh or the set up there. I was just thinking of some semi-large city on the East Coast and bam! So sorry if I got something really wrong. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy it!