She's nineteen in a skirt made of stars, walking through the streets of Glasgow in a faux attempt to look interested in the surroundings. Her grandfather's leather bomber was warm against her arms, the knives hidden within clinking together like a faint wind chime behind the ice on the surrounding windows. The dull chick-chick of her heels on the pavement was only a nuisance if she listened too closely, and her crystalline eyes turned upward to acknowledge the coming snow. Wind whistled through her hair; long black strands spilled out across the air like tattered pieces of a flag, clinging to her skull in a fierce attempt to not be lost to the breeze. She ran her painted fingers through her locks and sighed. She would not find him here.
Knuckles tightened and the ribbed zipper on the old coat split her palm, the pain a momentary flash before the blood spilled and she was being followed. They could smell her for miles, she knew it, but there was nothing to do right now but walk. No one turned heads; no one looked or even cared—the dog, wounded, unable to track the kill.
Not her. Not today.
Three weeks later she's leaving LAX with a rucksack and a camera in her hands. She's found the trail again, and this time she intends to do her job completely. Outside is a man with a bag full of hardware, and she bumps him long enough for the exchange to take place. A slight drop of the wrist, articulated fingers, and she has two bags now as she strolls up the boulevard. Her feet are concentrated on the path she must take, the long road to the slow death, but this is her life and damnit if she isn't going to make something of it. A hailed cab, a shuffle into the back seat, and five twenties pushed into a sweaty palm. "This should cover the trip to Charming with a tip. Drive. Stop on the city border." Her accent is thick and she wonders if he understood her completely, but he drives anyway, and within minutes she's leaving the sleepless city for something so much smaller.
On the drive she dreams. Her dreams divulge a secret.
She's fifteen but looks are deceiving, and Belfast has filled her. All she wants, needs is in her hands, the softness of his cut is too real against her skin and his kiss is dizzying. He's supposed to die here, tonight, on the roof of this hotel, but she breathes and can't think and suddenly he's a part of her, consuming her from her most intimate place in an unrelenting fury. He's everything, and the stars in her eyes match the sky when her body shudders to a halt in his grasp. She knows he thinks she's so much older, so much wiser, and she lets him walk away with another woman's name on his breath. She's not Fiona, never will be.
She should have killed him when he murmured that name.
Her eyes open to a new place, a new town. The border of Charming, California is hot under her feet but it's only her imagination, the lack of pills in her system making her think she can feel the separation beneath her. She walks like she had in Glasgow, in a skirt made of stars with her grandfather's bomber tucked around her form. The bags aren't heavy on her back. The rucksack is for herself, the messenger bag for him. She hears the silencer clink against her blades, and her smile turns dark and cold.
Murder in the face of dishonesty, but her job has been paid and this time she won't fuck it up. Teller-Morrow is bright, a lighthouse in the middle of the darkened sea of town, and she can't wait to see the look on his face when he sees her.
The open sign is about to turn off but she knocks on the window and flashes the young Latino man a bright, canine-filled smile. His voice is unsure as he tells her they're closing, and it almost makes her laugh. He can't keep his eyes off of her and it's like a reward in the best and worst of ways.
"I'm looking for a friend. His name is Filip."
The boy disappears and returns with him, his eyes drunk and he smells like whiskey-covered cigarettes, but he knows her by the redness of her lips and the coldness in her pale blue eyes.
"You."
His accent is as thick as hers but slurred, and it takes her a second to realize that isn't happiness in his tone.
She knows that he knows.
The small padlock between her breasts is an unwelcome reminder and he hates how much he's missed her. It's like adding gasoline to embers, the fire springing back to life after a brief breath of fresh air. He's drunk, just like he was that night, and his entire being shakes with so much anger and need that he hardly knows who he is anymore. He can feel his brothers' eyes on his back, worried and curious and holding too many questions for him to want to answer. She's still there when he opens his eyes from blinking too long, like a bad dream that he can't escape. He knew she'd come; never questioned that fact. It was always a matter of when, of how, even of why.
A flicker and it didn't matter, though. Her fingertips against his cheeks, her lips on his; the smell of her was enough to drown him and he was sober all at once, his hands grasping her raven silk locks between his calloused fingers and never wanting to breathe again. She tasted like raspberries and wasted promises, of forgiveness and hate and everything all at once. If he was to die, it would be by her hand, and this was something he had resigned himself to after that night in Belfast, when the air was too hot and her skin was like ice underneath him.
When they parted, a large inhale was drawn and held. Everything stilled, the world stopped save for the rambling of some song on the radio from behind his back.
"I'm glad you're still alive."
"M'not," He slurs at her, anger and desire in his tone. Her fingernails are a bright green he notes, reminds him of home in the summer when he wasn't stuck face-down on the pavement.
"Don't be like that, darling." Her thick Romanian accent rolls her R's, and he feels his manhood swell against his jeans. It was what had drawn him to her in the first place, hearing her speak in that delicious Slavic tone that didn't make sense when she was angry or drunk. He wanted to touch her again but reminded himself where he was, who he was now, and crossed his arms in case they decided to move on their own.
"I dunnae have a choice, lass."
Her eyes looked disappointed and he wanted to do anything to make that feeling go away.
He walked back inside instead.
He said his name was Juice.
She found solace in his latte'-coloured arms, in they way he smelled and tasted and how his hips rolled up to meet hers with eager anticipation. He was so young, so needy, and it was a refreshing feeling to be desired for something other than assassination. He murmured a name and it was hers and oh god he felt so good under her.
It was a different kind of betrayal. He was lying to his brother for a woman they both loved in different ways.
She found herself torn, but she found herself all the same.