I am SO SORRY for the long wait on this chapter :(. I hope you guys are still with me!!!!
In any case, it may be a bit choppy, and I will go back tomorrow and reread/edit some parts, but for now, here it is.
BTW I put some reference pictures up in my profile for this story. Let me know what else you want to see :)
In which new firsts are established
A week later, Sloane called Evangeline into the room containing the Loom of Fate to hand her the artifact that she had been dreading. He peered at her over his glasses, he handed her the slip, attached to a swatch of white linen fabric. Evangeline took it silently, reluctantly, tight jawed, and pale, as if he was handing over her own death sentence instead of her father's.
"Your first job, Evangeline."
She simply turned around and made her way out the door, the orders of the Fraternity clenched in her fists. Just as she was about to exit through the large double doors, Sloane's voice pulled her to a stop.
"I hope you understand, Evangeline, this is a test, and failure will not be tolerated."
The girl paused, staring at the ground in front of her. With a clenching of her jaw and a final swallow of tears, she made her way out of the door. Sloane remained behind, simply standing with his clipboard and pencil poised between is fingers. With a heavy sigh, he removed his glasses and gives a hard pinch to the bridge of his nose. This was going to be more difficult than he thought, for all of them.
Later in the afternoon Sloane met with Cross, Mr. X, Fox, the Gunsmith, and the Repairman while the Butcher kept Evangeline busy. While Fox was draped elegantly in a chair, the rest of the men remained scattered and standing about the room. Cross in particular, stood, leaning against the far wall with a set grimace on his lips. This whole business with Evangeline executing her father as a sort of test simply didn't sit right with him. Loyalty be damned, setting daughter against father was sick.
He had eventually managed to get Evangeline calmed down, but ever since that day in the library, she seemed to be in an emotional deadlock. Every day she would robotically go about her duties without a flicker of the usual light she managed to cast in the Fraternity dwelling. Each member had tried his hand at getting her to laugh or even crack a smile, but to no avail. She had cut herself off and boxed herself in.
"I'm sending Fox with her." Sloane stated. Cross's head snapped up. The rest of the members remained motionless, obviously having been previously informed that this would be the course of action.
"Sloane, I'll go." It was clearly a demand on Cross's part. The room stood silent for a moment as his words swirled through the air before finally settling in a thick film making the world seem heavy and muted until Sloane's voice cut through.
"No."
"But wh-"
"It has to be her kill, Cross, without interference from you." The two men were now standing at opposite ends of the table, their eyes locked in a soundless battle.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Fox, who had been watching the scene unfold with an air of almost bored indifference, suddenly looked up and engaged Cross in a steady glare.
"You baby her. Stop trying to replace Wesley. She's not your boy, so don't treat her like she-" She never managed to finish her sentence. In the blink of an eye, Cross was across the room, pinning Fox to the wall.
"Don't you dare talk about Wesley. You have no right." His voice was dangerously low, his nose mere millimeters from Fox's. The woman didn't budge an inch. The only sign of discomfort she showed was a small flinch as Cross gave her a final shove against her jugular before stalking out the door.
"Well that went well, don't you think?" Fox muttered.
"As well as could be expected." Sloane gathered his paperwork and strode calmly out the doors after Cross. The rest of the Fraternity took this as a sign that the meeting had been adjourned and took their time filtering out of the meeting room. The only one who remained inside was Fox.. She stood a moment longer in the empty room, her expression thoughtful. The results of this game of Sloane's would have interesting results indeed.
To say that the night of the assassination was tense would have been the greatest understatement made in history. After the conference, Cross had holed himself up in his room, refusing to come out, much less look at or talk to any of the other members. Evangeline continued her training, and business went on somehow. Finally, it was time.
Evangeline walked out of her room, dressed in a pair of dark jeans, black t-shirt, and dark leather jacket. In the loading dock, the Fraternity was waiting. Sloane at the head of the group stepped forward and handed Evangeline a silver pistol nestled comfortably in a leather holster. "You remember our procedure, Evangeline?"
It was all she could do to nod wordlessly and slip the clip onto her belted pants. Fox, leaning against the wall of the room pushed off the concrete and stepped forward as well. "Let's go kid." She turned on her heel and moved forward, obviously expecting the girl to follow.
Before she could take one step, however, Cross emerged from the shadows with a scratchy "Wait." The man was obviously in bad shape. Unshaven and haggard, his breath smelled like a brewery. Still wearing the rumpled clothes of a few days ago he immediately clasped Evangeline in a rough embrace and whispered in her ear, "Listen kid, what they're making you do is wrong. You hear me? Think about what you're about to do. You can still back out, okay? You have a choice."
The small body in his arms pulled away and regarded him with glassy, doe-like eyes. "No. I don't have a choice. My fa- he took away my choice, when he decided to do all that he's done." Cross pulled her back in and cradled her head against his shoulder.
"Okay. I'll be here for you when you get back."
Getting her into the house was no problem, the hard part was making sure that she would follow through, as planned. So far, Fox was having an easy time, being the designated contact for this hit. Her job was to make sure that if anything went contrary to plan, she would be there to minimize damage, and that meant taking out everyone involved if necessary. It killed her to be put in this position, but it was a job, and Fox was never one to turn away from her job. It was the only thing that she had in this life that made any sense to her, and she wasn't going to let anything take that stability away. Crouched in the shadows of the Japanese garden, Fox kept a careful eye on the transmitted feed from a small camera they attached to Evangeline. The girl's breathing echoed softly in her earpiece, occasionally hitching a bit, and for a few seconds, stopping entirely.
For Evangeline, stability, and the job were the last things on her mind. She had thought about this night for weeks, mentally steeling herself against the onslaught of tears that threatened whenever she imagined the tableau of her standing over her dead father. The man who had raised her for 18 years would be her first victim. She kept telling herself that he couldn't be her father anymore. The man in the downstairs office, beyond that cracked mahogany door, sitting illuminated by warm lights was not her father. She wouldn't let him be.
Having been missing from her home for months now, it was a strange feeling to be entering the cavernous garage. It was as if nothing had changed. The black cars, sleek and shiny still sat in their usual places; there was still that patch of off-white paint on the far wall that didn't quite match the rest of the room. Evangeline had walked across that concrete floor billions of times before, but today her footsteps felt heavy and labored. The piece of foreign plastic and metal hanging from her hip seemed to pull down on her with the weight of the world. Though things looked the same, they were irrevocably different. As she approached the door that would lead into the home's gym where she first encountered Fox, Evangeline paused.
This was the final threshold, the point of no return. If she entered this house right now, she would have to leave a corpse behind. Taking a deep breath, Evangeline gently eased the door open. Glancing at the security camera quickly, she slipped her way in between the wooden panels, silent as a shadow. There it was, in all it's austere serenity, her workout room. When she had first embarked on the discipline of Chinese martial arts, her father cleared this space for her and had it converted. She had loved the airy expansive feeling of the clean white walls and would spend hours every day practicing her forms. Tonight, the walls, heavy laden with prizes and medals seemed to crush in on her, creating an oppressive atmosphere that made it difficult to breath.
She had to stop again. This time, however, she must have stopped for too long, because she was startled by the sound of Fox's voice buzzing in her ear. "Hey kid. Comon now, don't flake out on me." Evangeline swallowed hard and pressed forward. What felt like hours later, she finally arrived at the door to her father's study. Within, she could hear the soft scratching of his fountain pen and the muted clicking of the grandfather clock. Every sensation seemed to pulse and quiver around her. She wouldn't make a scene. She would simply slip into the room and do what was asked of her. She pushed open the door slowly, and slipped inside, concealing herself in the shadows of the bookcases. By the time her father looked up at the opening door, she was already hidden, trying to catch her breath for what would happen next.
Congressman Chang rose slowly from his desk to walk across the room and close the door once more. The click of the door shutting reverberated throughout the room. Evangeline was only vaguely aware of this sound. The only thing she could focus on was her father's feet, shuffling quietly across the lush carpet back to his desk. With no interference from Fox, Evangeline watched him work for a few more seconds before stepping into the light. "Ba." she said in nearly a whisper.
The man at the desk jumped at the sudden intrusion, but his face softened when he realized that it was his daughter standing before him. "Evangeline! You're mother and I have been so worried!" He rose quickly from his chair, arms outstretched in order to fold his little girl into an embrace. Before he even made it beyond his desk, the congressman was stopped by a second sound, much colder than the first. He paused, realizing that he was staring down the barrel of a silencer, and the metallic click was the sound of the safety sliding out of place. "Evangeline…what, what are you doing?"
She didn't answer his question. "Evangeline, I'm you're father. Think about what you're doing." The assassin's entire body was tense, vibrating with an almost imperceptible tremor. "Where have you been?" He stepped forward a bit more, making another move to capture her in his arms, but she jumped back realigning the gun to point at his chest. "Come now. Evangeline. Let's be reasonable. Put the gun down and we can talk this over. Tell me what this is all about. If you're in any kind of trouble, I can help. You just need to put the gun down."
Against her will, Evangeline's glare softened for a moment. The brief second of weakness allowed a few teardrops to escape the corners of her eyes. She desperately blinked, trying to regain control over her emotions. Everything about this felt so wrong. The gun in her hand felt alien despite the fact that only yesterday it fit in her palm providing a comfortable pressure. Her arms were heavy, so heavy and all her small frame wanted to do was lean forward and let the man in front of her hold her and rock her like he did when she was little. Evangeline's muscles slackened, her arms falling to her side. Immediately her hands, one of them still holding the firearm came up to her face to cover her face, her body shaking with silent sobs. She could practically feel her father exhale as he moved forward to take his daughter back.
Congressman Chang moved closer, until he was about six inches in front of his little girl, barely recognizable at this point in all that leather and dark clothing. He was so close that she could smell his cologne. Before he could take another step, Evangeline raised her head. "I'm sorry." And with those two words, she steadied her gun and fired two bullets into her father's chest. She barely registered the shock in his eyes before she lifted the gun higher and planted one more bullet between his eyes. It was done. In the Oriental garden of the estate, Fox breathed a sigh of relief. For a second, she thought that their protégé had lost it and that she would have to go in and do clean up. The woman spoke into the microphone. "You did good, kid. I'm coming in to get you. Don't move."
Moving was the last thing on her mind. Evangeline Chang stood where she was, eyes fixed on the wall, her father's blood smeared across the decorative fan. Her hands were ice cold and clawed in a death grip around the handle of her weapon. It still felt unbearably heavy, but she couldn't bring herself to let it go. It wasn't until Fox entered the room and attempted to pry it from her fingers that Evangeline broke out of her trance. Docile as a lamb, she handed Fox the gun and followed her out of the room, not even looking back at the body lying on the floor.
In the foyer of the Fraternity headquarters, everybody sat on pins and needles waiting for the return of the black van. The only question was, whether the vehicle would house one person or two. To the relief of everyone in that room, the corridors were suddenly alive with the sound of two distinct footsteps. Evangeline entered first, eyes vacant, followed by Fox who gave a definitive nod to Sloane. He rose from his place and came forward to greet the newest member of the Fraternity of Assassins. No words were exchanged, only a silent conversation of locked gazes took place before the man stepped aside, allowing the girl to make her way up the stairs into her living quarters. Cross silently followed.
As he stepped into the dark room, the creaking of the floorboards announcing his presence, Cross felt his stomach twist. She sat on her bed, back to the entrance, ramrod straight in the dark. Cautiously, he made his way over and sat next to her. The expression on Evangeline's face was heartbreaking. Once a vivacious and bubbly young woman, all traces of the girl was gone, replaced instead by an empty shell of a human being. The eyes were completely opaque, dead pools of nothingness, the mouth pale and pressed into a hard line, her cheeks pallid and grey. Without another second wasted, Cross pulled her into his arms. But rather the easy submission to his embrace, and the anticipated collapse into sobs, he felt her body stiffen. She fought him. She pushed against his chest, and beat his arms with her fists. Her slender legs kicked against his and beat against the floor in protest. "Let me go." she would mumble occasionally. "Please, just let me go." The words were accompanied by the thick garbled quality that always came with tears.
Cross refused to release her. "No, Evangeline-" At the sound of her name, she found a reserve of strength that allowed her to push out of his grasp leaving her standing in front of him.
"Don't call me that! Oh god-" The words came out in a screech and were followed by a hysterical peal of sobbing. "Please. Don't, just don't call me that." She kept repeating the words over and over again in a desperate plea. Finally, losing her strength, Evangeline collapsed in a heap at her mentor's feet. For a moment, he was at a loss. Cross sat on the bed, watching the young girl as her body was wracked with shivers, her voice nearly hoarse from crying.
He couldn't just let her remain in the middle of the floor, on her own island. Cross moved forward again, and with greater determination this time, crushed the Evangeline into his chest. This time, she didn't fight. She had lost all the fight that existed inside of her. Instead, she simply melted into his arms, and let him hold her like she wished she had let her father do nearly an hour earlier.
Please REVIEW. I would love some feedback on 1) how you're enjoying the story so far 2) what I could improve on 3) character development/realistic plot development 4) anything about future plot bunnies :)
Enjoy!