This chapter has about 7k, so you might want to take some time before reading it or split it up.

cw & tw: a bit of angst/self-hate, graphic descriptions of third/fourth degree burns (please don't google it if you have recently eaten or intend on eating soon)

Things could go better. Yeah, they could, especially this thing here.

She wouldn't exactly say it was giving her anxiety, but it was, kinda, like too much attention was making her uneasy, like being too close to people was making her want to get away, like nightmares were making her restless.

Darja wished she hadn't come up with the last thought.

The silence didn't help, never had, never would – it was the reason she started to think so much in the first place because there was nothing to distract her, nothing she could distract herself with. It felt like this quiet was pushing against her, pushing up all those memories she wanted to keep buried, spilling them and bringing them up.

She drummed her fingers against the arm rest of the chair, the muffled noise not satisfying her. Neither was the gesture. It wasn't enough to fill the silence.

Obviously, something important had come up and it wasn't looking like Merlin was going to come back any time soon, so she was probably stuck here with this kid for a while.

Great. Really, great, really fucking great.

Honestly, she couldn't say why she was angry about it. Maybe she was just angry at everything, maybe she was just angry at herself, maybe it didn't matter. Maybe this wasn't time and place to work through emotions.

Simply waiting was something she couldn't do that easily though. It was – she didn't know; it was different when she was on a job. She had a purpose then, a goal, something to focus on. Now she had nothing, only time to kill and that wasn't the same.

Sighing, she dug through the pocket of her sweater, pulling out the pack of cigarettes before putting one between her lips.

The boy threw a glance at her.

"You shouldn't smoke in here," he told her after a second of hesitation.

She lit her cigarette anyway, proceeding to snap her lighter shut and take a long drag, filling her lungs with smoke.

Darja exhaled it through her nose, arching her eyebrows at him. "Well, too late, what do you wanna do now?" There would have been a twitch of her lips, an amused smile, if the situation wasn't as bad as it was.

He studied her for a moment, possibly contemplating what to do, and, honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if he pulled some James Bond shit, some really exaggerated stunt. He seemed like the type.

Not so surprisingly, he only blinked and looked away – she didn't miss an emotion crossing his face, something between annoyance and dislike. His luck.

She took another drag. It wasn't calming her like they always said, but she couldn't remember the last time smoking had actually calmed her. It was only a habit, a bad and unhealthy one which was enough reason to get rid of it. She hadn't, hadn't wanted to, not really able to say why.

The silence returned. She couldn't say whether she preferred it over a conversation, but she wasn't going to start one just to find out, because the only thing she'd like to do as of this moment was getting drunk. Or doing drugs. Both sounded good, actually.

The kid was studying her. He kept glancing at her.

The thing was, he looked like … she didn't know, like she stepped on a puppy, maybe his puppy – not that she would do that intentionally and if she did unintentionally, she'd apologize a thousand times, but … still. He had to know she had killed people, more than she could count, and he had never looked at her like that before.

Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair, turning around towards him when it got too annoying.

"Do you have a problem?" she asked, not … sounding like she had thought she would; she was neither exactly snapping at him but neither was she asking a normal question.

He didn't reply right away, making her think he wasn't going to reply at all.

"So, you like being a hitman and all?" he asked then, quietly, with an accent she hadn't noticed before. It wasn't the question she had been expecting.

"It's just a job," she answered with a roll of her eyes. It wasn't; it had been a way out, it had been an option she had been given and she had taken it.

"You kill people for a living," he replied, his voice hovering between shock and … she didn't know, anger, but anger seemed too big of a word. He wasn't angry, he just didn't understand.

"It's not-" She cut herself off, shaking her head. "Honestly, I don't care enough to explain." She shrugged, still wishing she hadn't said anything at all, because … sure, she could have said worse things, more personal things, but the conversation wasn't over, she was afraid, and she didn't want to find out what could slip her.

"Why'd you become a hitman then?" he asked and she glared at him. Unfortunately, it wasn't intimidating him; she hadn't assumed it would, he seemed … he seemed a little out of place in his suit and in this building, like he was still kinda new to it but settling in, slowly, and … it was just a feeling, an instinct, like so many things were.

"I didn't become one," she corrected him, taking a long drag from her cigarette to stop herself from saying more. "It happened. I was given the option and I didn't say no."

The boy blinked. Darja regretted speaking.

"Oh, come on," she muttered, huffing. "Don't act like you don't kill people too. You'll also get paid for it. Where's the difference?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it again, so hesitant to answer that … well. Shit. Yeah. She knew why. Her morals were fucked up. Always had been, she guessed, growing up like she had, and yet the realization left a bitter taste on her tongue, a thought she couldn't phrase flashing through her head.

This kid wasn't an aristocrats' son but he wasn't as damaged as she was either, not living between barrels and blades, faked passwords and dollar bills, hotel suites and planes, alcohol and drugs.

She swallowed.

"Don't tell," she said then, leaning back into her chair and drawing up a leg under her, filling her lungs with smoke again until she felt like suffocating. "I know." It exited through her nose and mouth when she spoke. "It's the morals." She lifted her shoulders carelessly, lazily. "Well, we can't all be good examples, can't we?" A biting smile pulled at her lips, hurting her, but the arrogance was easy to slip back in, familiar, and she nearly forgot about the implication, how she was saying more than she wanted to.

God. Fuck. Why couldn't she just, for once, think first and talk later?

She would have thought, she learned that at some point during the last decade or so, but here she was, spilling secrets buried so deep she hadn't even known about them to some kid she didn't even like – was actively trying not to like and not get liked in return. Sympathies made everything always so hard.

He … was still watching her and while it wasn't exactly freaking her out, it was strange, at the same time, in a way, because – she didn't know. She could tell that he was trying to figure out what was going on with her, what she was thinking, yeah, but she wasn't afraid that he was going to find something, since … shit, she had no idea and maybe that was the arrogance speaking and maybe that was bad, a wrong, thing, maybe she was underestimating him.

"Hey, if you're looking for advice on how to deal with killing people, look elsewhere," she snarled, not letting the silence get to her. It had been supposed to be an off-hand comment, a casual one, but it ended up being nothing like that.

"I ain't-"

She cut him off with a roll of her eyes. "Then why you're asking?" she retorted, not expecting an answer. "I'm not buying you're just curious in the things I do, because you probably couldn't care less."

Still studying him, she arched an eyebrow further, the gesture more of a habit than intention.

He didn't reply right away, which was coming as no surprise, because, whatever reasons he had, she was sure he wasn't actually going to tell her. He didn't have to and it wasn't like she was gonna … torture him or something – if he thought she would, that was alright, but she had better things to do than that. Well, not right now, but in general and she wasn't that much into hurting people, not if they hadn't done anything to deserve every pain that could be inflicted on someone without killing them.

The kid opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, seeming to think of something but deciding against it last second, starting again.

"You know you don't have to tell me, right?" she asked, sounding a bit too soft for her tastes, cigarette ashes staining her jeans and the carpet.

"You didn't have to tell me either," he retorted, cocking his eyebrow, and, fuck, yeah, she had been underestimating him. A little. It still sucked.

"Yeah, well, shit happens," she muttered, putting the cigarette to her lips again to stop herself from talking. She had said too much already and she regretted it, but there was nothing to be done about it now and worrying about it wouldn't help her either.

Darja started drumming her fingers against the arm rest again, her gaze focused on nothing in particular, her thoughts … not exactly existent. She didn't mind. There could have been worse.

How much time had passed anyway? It seemed like forever, but it couldn't be more than a couple of minutes, not enough, and it … she didn't know what it was making her – 'uneasy' came closest, she guessed.

Part of her wanted to reverse time and stop herself from ever starting to talk.

She pulled out her phone, glancing at the display. Nothing. Expected but not exactly delighting. Darja put the device away again.

There wasn't much left of her cigarette and, for a second, she contemplated lighting another one, so that the thoughts wouldn't get to her, although she probably shouldn't, health concerns and all. As a hitman, health was pretty important but, then again, Ylvi, Nik, and Elias had been smoking for as long as she could remember.

And it wasn't like she hadn't have a thousand options of stopping until now and yet she had never done it. She couldn't even remember why she had began in the first place, if she was honest.

She drew in another breath, slowly, trying to keep it in her lungs for a while before releasing it, like she had seen on the internet. It wasn't working.

"How old are you?" the kid asked then.

Darja gave him a brief glance, studying him. She shouldn't, she should just ignore him because whatever she was going to say, it wasn't going to improve the situation.

"Older than you," she replied, not even sure whether it was true. Maybe. Maybe not. She didn't care.

"How much older?"

She snorted, rolling her eyes at him, brushing off the topic with a wave of her hand. Hopefully, he wasn't going to keep asking. Really. Age was … she didn't want to talk about age. It wasn't that important anyway, didn't matter when you killed people. Nothing did, really, nothing ever truly mattered. Birth didn't matter, age didn't matter, past didn't matter, future didn't matter; it only mattered whether you accomplished your goals and whether your were happy – it was what Jack had told her and he had seemed ancient back then, a thousand years' wisdom inside of him. It had sounded like he had just shared the secret to life and … it hadn't been hard to imagine that he truly had.

"Too much," she added after a moment, hoping it would shut him up.

He was looking at her, skeptically, studying her with that nearly-frown on his face, seeming as if he was going to ask, as if he was going to say something. He didn't, in the end, but it didn't make her feel better.

Shit. Maybe she should … maybe she should really just go and never come back, never waste a second thought on this again and find another way – she had orders though. And things were never truly as easy as they appeared on first glance, and since this already appeared like shit, it had to be even more shit underneath and-

Maybe she should stop thinking about it, after all, she didn't have the magical power to just, miraculously, resolve any situation.

Hopefully, this was going to be over soon. Very, very soon.

His heart beat too fast. A bitter taste spread on his tongue.

It wasn't exactly unease, rather concern, since he hadn't anticipated seeing Roxy that way, so … somewhere between horrified and sick. Perhaps, it had to do with what she had found out about Darja.

Surely, he had assumed there were going to be gruesome information, details he didn't want to know. He had been very aware that she had killed people, brutally, that she had done much more than that, but he hadn't thought it would turn out to so bad. And as easily accessible as that, so, possibly, the reason for the shock on Roxy's face was a different one after all.

Silence settled in between them, briefly, heavily, a second too long.

The agent appeared as if she wanted to say something but couldn't, this fact worrying him more than he could currently express.

Her knuckles had turned white from holding the file she carried so tightly. It was a slim one, not appearing capable of holding such terrors, but matters rarely looked as bad as they were on first glance.

Merlin cleared his throat. "What did you find out?" he asked, carefully, quietly. He didn't want to stress her any more.

She raised her gaze, jaw set and shoulders straight. She was still swallowing a little too hard and her skin was still a little too pale, her eyes still a little too wide for him to think she was truly all right.

"Right," she said, slowly, looking at him with an expression that caused more concern to rise up inside of him. "I … have to inform you that Bors went undercover. He was in Moscow when I received his last transmission, saying he was being followed after sending me the documents he found." She nodded at the file.

His stomach dropped. First, agents didn't go undercover often, if at all. Second, he hadn't been there; if he had, he could have – he didn't know what he could have done, but he could have been there how he was supposed to. He got them in and he got them out. Usually.

Third, it meant that Darja was connected to someone powerful, influential, past the normal means.

He nodded, barely, pushing away the thought but it lingered, burned into his brain like acid – he had underestimated the danger. He had made a mistake. He had brought agents into danger. Most importantly: Darja wasn't just a hitman.

"I'll make sure he'll return alive and well," Merlin promised, not knowing whether it was the kind he could keep.

"There is no guarantee these documents are even about her," Roxy said after a moment, hesitating before continuing. "It's nearly like she doesn't officially exist."

"I feared that much," he replied, his frown growing deeper as he looked at her.

Carefully, she extended her hand, holding the file towards him. Her fingers were shaking although she was trying her best to conceal it.

He took it.

"There is a birth certificate," she said then. "As well as a school certificate. And … photos." She pressed her lips together, suppressing … a gagging reflex, he was afraid. "Very, very graphic photos of a burn. Bors had to break into a hospital to receive them. After that …"

He could only nod. He wanted to say something positive instead, something to cheer her up. He lacked the words.

Cautiously, he opened the file.

The first page was, indeed, a copy of a Russian birth certificate. All names and data had been blacked out, except the child's name, Darja, and the year of birth, 1989.

It wasn't prove of anything, Roxy had been right about that. Merlin figured, there had been several girls born in the same year with the same name – if 'Darja' was her real name.

He turned the page. Next was the school certificate. Seventh grade. It had been issues in 2002, right before the summer holidays in June; last name and exact date of birth blacked out as well.

Glancing at the marks, he bit back a sigh. Nothing extra-ordinary about them.

"Apparently, certificates past this one don't exist," Roxy said. "Just earlier ones."

"What do you mean?" he questioned, already aware he wouldn't like the answer.

"As far as I reconstructed, the student failed to show up after the Christmas holidays," she answered, the breaths she drew in too flat. "But the child was never reported missing. No one seemed to care."

It sounded like one of these cases of mysterious disappearances that went unsolved for decades, if they were ever investigated to begin with.

He felt sick, his head coming up with too many scenarios, connecting missions he had worked on years ago to this.

Perhaps, he was wrong – it was a brief thought, barely held up by any logic. Children didn't just go missing and never turned up again without anyone ever looking for them. Not under normal circumstances.

Merlin had to think back to the phone call with her 'boss', considering what kind of man he had talked to. He wasn't sure, to be honest, it was hard telling something like this only by hearing someone's voice, especially if it was such an emotionless one.

"I see," he said, his throat dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

"The photos are next," Roxy warned him, biting her lip.

He nodded, then taking in a deep breath to prepare himself, and turned the page.

Loose pictures. He picked up one.

It took him a moment to realize that he was seeing a human body – a part of it, at least. A leg.

The skin had turned black, peeling away, if there was anything left of it, revealing the flesh beneath – red and exposed, hanging there in pieces. Pus leaked from the wound, bright yellow and sickening. The bones had turned black too, possibly from sooth.

He had never seen a burn this severe, not even in all the years he had been at Kingsman.

Nausea rose in his throat. He tried swallowing it down as he picked up the next picture.

It didn't help.

They had cut away all the tissue that had been damaged beyond repair – half the leg. Muscles, nerves, blood vessels. Flesh. Even more skin. It had been sutured for the moment, yes, but considering how badly injured this person was, he thought it unlikely that there was anything to save; he would have opted for amputation.

The next photographs showed burns as well, much lighter ones, not going past the skin despite damaging some layers of it.

Surely, Doctor Clark had told him Darja's scar stemmed from a bad burn, meaning, there had been a lot of surgery to be done, not only the reconstructive kind. She had also noted, it was good work, one they couldn't replicate with their technology and discoveries.

Merlin hadn't assumed for even one moment it could have been that bad.

"These photos were in the same file as the birth certificate," Roxy told him.

There was a part of him that wanted to believe none of this had anything to do with the woman in his office – it seemed impossible for anyone with such an injury to ever walk again on their own two legs, let alone fight.

He swallowed twice to be sure he wasn't going to throw up. His stomach still twisted.

"Good work," he said with a tilt of his head, closing the file. He would rather not open it again. The pictures had already etched themselves into his brain either way, not leaving soon.

Roxy gave him a fleeting smile, the serious expression quickly returning to her face, hiding what was bothering her.

Merlin worried about her, about Eggsy – he wanted to be there for them, help them, be the kind of reasonable, more experienced friend they needed in a time like this, the kind of person they came to talk to, the kind of colleague who offered soothing and calming words during rough times, but he felt like he couldn't be any of that.

He hesitated for a moment longer.

"What's on your mind?" he asked then, his voice soft and quiet.

She looked at him, not replying right away. He understood her carefulness, he understood her caution, he understood the hesitation to speak the truth, and yet it left him with an unpleasant emotion since … he had wanted to be someone she and Eggsy could trust and he had failed that, it seemed.

"It's … about Darja," she said then, picking her words like she expected him to reject the topic right away. "I don't necessarily like her, but – do you think we can trust her?"

Merlin wasn't sure he knew what she mean. He figured, the constant need of turning every word, of reading into every so little gesture, of being mindful of everything, was straining, and, ultimately, getting to her. It was something he had neglected. He shouldn't have.

"I see," he said, swallowing, trying to think of an answer, of words to say that made sense. "I don't think she is exactly lying, but I do think she is hiding some things." It … wasn't an answer to her question, he knew, but it wasn't as easy as that. He wanted it to be, he wanted something to be easy for once, because he had lost a good friend barely a year ago and he didn't want to loose more.

"I'm sorry," he added. "I can't give you a clear yes or no."

She nodded at first, giving him an apologetic smile before shaking her head as if to say it was all right. He knew better than that.

Merlin kept looking for words, for something to say. He couldn't, he just couldn't, it wasn't working. The incapability made him doubt.

Briefly, silence stood too heavy between them.

"Let's go back inside," he said.

Roxy nodded, her expression growing serious again.

He turned around, walking back towards the door before opening it and motioning the agent to enter first. Only then he stepped inside himself, closing the door behind him.

There was the smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, sticking to the room, as the walked to his desk, sitting down behind it.

Roxy stopped next to Eggsy's chair.

He placed the file on the table, noticing Darja's gaze lingering on it a moment too long, nearly as if she knew what was inside.

"So," Eggsy said. "What now?"

Darja glanced at him, having arched her eyebrows, not saying anything – the latter surprised him.

Merlin looked at the younger agent, swallowing. That was another question he couldn't answer.

"It's easy enough," Darja said. She seemed distant, cold, like she was trying too hard to keep all of her emotions in check. He made a note to ask Eggsy about it the next time he got a chance.

"How so?" Merlin questioned when she didn't continue – perhaps, it was what she wanted him to do, or perhaps it was … something else; he was starting to see her differently and he couldn't tell whether he was making a mistake in doing so.

"It's just finding the mole and taking care of the issue," she replied. The twitching of her lips he expected didn't come. "Whatever that means." To her, it certainly meant killing.

"And if it's not as easy as that?" he asked, noticing his two agents watching her, then him, a little too close, a little too tense. They seemed to be waiting for something – a reaction, an answer.

"Well, then it's not," she said with a careless shrug of her shoulders. "Nothing's ever truly easy, so if things turn out to be different, they just get dealt with."

"And if it doesn't work?" Eggsy cut in, studying her.

"That's an issue for later," Darja replied, leaning back, her gaze still focused on the agent as she drummed her fingers against the arm rest of their chair.

Merlin frowned, studying her closer for a moment. There was something that made him stop and consider – it was an ignorant approach, even for her; she was too smart for suggesting something like that. She had to be aware of the consequences, of how everything was intervened, of how one couldn't ignore everything else.

She knew. He was sure, and yet … there was something else to her.

"It's an option," he said, slowly. Darja noticed it, noticed he wasn't agreeing with her – it was in the way she arched her eyebrows, in her eyes, in the way she looked at him, in the way she seemed to brace herself. "But it also is an ignorant approach."

She snorted, rolling her eyes like it didn't matter after all.

"We do not have the luxury of ignoring everything else," he went on.

"You," she corrected him, coolly. "You don't. You have to completely sure." Since she wasn't including herself, she thought she had other options, other possibilities – he didn't think she had.

"Don't you have to be?" he asked in return.

The tension had grown so strong, he could nearly physically feel it pressing against his chest.

He didn't understand it, neither he understood Darja. He had assumed he had, moments ago, but then she was so different – and, he assumed, he knew why. This right now, this cold and this anger, this opposing him just because: it wasn't her. It was who she pretended to be, perhaps, who she wanted to be.

"No," she replied, hesitating, covering it up with a tilt of her head. "My life's the only one I've got to worry about."

For a second, he thought he had misheard her. Her voice had been quiet, maybe a bit too quiet, and it was nothing he had imagined her saying without a cruel twitch of her lips, without taking satisfaction in revealing a matter as major as this; she wasn't doing it for the sake of it. She was doing it to deflect attention from herself.

Surely, Roxy and Eggsy had known that he had to consider the dangers to their lives too. But the way Darja had said it made it sound different, like he was purposefully going out of his way to make sure they would be safe.

She wasn't wrong about that.

He stumbled for words.

"Do you ever do something else than complain?" Eggsy cut in, his gaze fixed on the hitman.

"If there is something else to do, yes," she retorted without missing a heartbeat. "But it isn't looking like there's anything, is it?" Her tone was sharp, icy, her accent rougher – her expression was hard now, cold, stern.

"Easy," Merlin said, hoping to stop the situation from escalating.

"I'm not taking it easy," Darja hissed. "I'm sick of doing nothing. I'm sick of having nothing to work with. All you do is talk and talk and nothing's coming out of it."

"You're wrong," he argued. "Sometimes, it simply takes time. Plans do at least."

"Plans don't help when there's nothing to plan in the first place," she retorted.

It wasn't like he didn't understand her, but he couldn't agree with her either.

Slowly, he drew in a breath, letting it out again as he looked at her. The expression in her eyes was still too hard. She wouldn't give in, he was sure. It reminded him of desperation. She wouldn't admit it if he asked.

"There is something," he said then.

"You know what I mean," she muttered in return, briefly glaring at him. She leaned forward a couple of inches, her elbows balanced on her knees. There was something intense in it, something he hadn't seen before. It made him uneasy. "How many people work for you again? I'm sure there won't be any difficulty to find one mole, right? And there surely won't be any issue planning all the possibilities, right?" There was an edge to her voice, a sharp tone, anger, and yet, she wasn't accusing him, she didn't seem to be angry at him, them.

"I didn't say it would be easy," he replied, frowning. He had an idea what she was trying to say, however-

She gritted her teeth, the line of her jaw too harsh and too hard. She swallowed the words she had wanted to say, kept them to herself. It looked as if she was trying to bite off her tongue, preferring that over answering. It … wasn't unlikely, considering how proud she was, but this was a mask she was wearing and there were numerous things buried beneath. It wasn't his place to un-bury them.

He blinked.

She broke eye contact, her gaze on the pocket of her sweater for a second.

"I've got to make a call," she said, rising to her feet, the excuse sounding as bad as it was.

She didn't exactly slam the door when she left the room.

It was only then he realized a couple of things, one of them more unsettling than the one before.

Merlin swallowed, the silence suddenly crushing him.

But since giving up wasn't an option, he simply took a deep breath and sorted through his thoughts before he looked at his two agents.

They studied him, questions he couldn't phrase bothering them.

"I am sorry," he said, not knowing what he was sorry for.

"There's no reason to apologize," Roxy told him after a moment, softly, but her face expressed more worry than he could bear.

"Yeah," Eggsy agreed with a small nod.

He still felt like he had to, over and over again, until he was sure he hadn't failed his job.

"Thank you," he said instead, tilting his head respectfully.

There was a moment of quiet, a moment of hesitation for him.

"I'll be right back," he said then, slowly getting up.

Eggsy and Roxy gave him a brief nod when he left the room.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck.

She could keep cursing forever and it wouldn't change a thing – she wished it would.

It was just … fuck. Everything was a big, goddamned clusterfuck. She was.

There was a tremble in her fingers, not easing with the cigarette, no matter how much smoke she inhaled. Maybe she needed alcohol, maybe she needed drugs, maybe she needed a distraction – just … something, anything, because she didn't know what to do and that was a feeling she hated with every cell of her body.

There was just – there was just nothing, plainly nothing, and … shit. Shit, yeah, it was scaring her, it was scaring her really badly, because she had always been scared of being power- and helpless and it pretty much looked like she was right now.

And there was another thing she was scared of: people. Of … shit, she didn't know; she was too deep in this mess already, there was no point denying it, but she had never put it into words before, not consciously, not voluntarily. There was only going down now, since she couldn't keep pretending that she hated everyone and everything forever; there was no use running, there was no way of hiding.

Darja didn't remember the last time neither of that had worked – well, no, she remembered, but she didn't mean-

Shit, she didn't mean that, but her hands were trembling so bad, she was going to drop her cigarette, she couldn't breathe, her mind-

She gritted her teeth until her jaw hurt, until she tasted blood, until she felt like she was going to break out her own teeth, before she took another drag, holding her phone tighter with her other hand.

The display stayed dark. She couldn't say what she had expected. Maybe she had hoped Jack would fix her problems for her, would provide her with a solution to everything, would … do the same he had done years ago.

He wasn't going to call her back. He wasn't. She might as well bury her hope and her self-esteem when she was at it. Wishing didn't change anything, praying didn't, so she didn't even try.

Still, … she was angry, angry at herself, because she used to be better at this, she used to be better at her fucking job, she used to be better at not getting breakdowns when all she was supposed to do was stay calm and do whatever she had to.

She closed her eyes, then opened them again.

Things were still fucked up. They hadn't miraculously gotten better.

Well, shit. Yeah. That was what it was. It wasn't like she didn't know, it was just … she didn't actually know, didn't want to know – she never had been good at admitting, at dealing with stuff, especially not if it involved feelings, but her feelings had always been a mess, her instincts a bit too fast and careless when it came to trusting people. Years of training hadn't changed that.

She sucked in a deep breath through aching teeth, the iced air stinging in her lungs. She should be getting up from the top of the stone wall if she didn't want to catch a cold, but the trees and long stretches of field were creepy, too wide and too empty, so she'd rather not face them.

Darja put her cigarette to her lips again, inhaling the smoke deep enough to fill all of her lungs with it. It still wasn't calming her.

Her feet dangled in the air, kind of useless. Her hands were useless too, about to freeze solid. The cold kept creeping through her jeans and trainers, through her pullover and jacket, eating through her skin. It wasn't as bad as heat.

She exhaled, ignoring the steps, the smoke curling through her nose and mouth.

It were Merlin's, she could tell … for some reason,.

He stopped. His shoes were in her field of vision. She still pretended not to notice him.

"Go away," she said after a while where he just stood there. It was more of a mutter though, more … she didn't sound like she had intended to.

"I'm afraid I can't," he replied.

She huffed in return, leaning back, balancing her weight on one hand, meeting his gaze with a glare.

"Because it's so hard to pretend everything's alright," she retorted sarcastically, sounding too rough. It was better than her voice giving in though.

He looked at her for a moment, his expression not changing. She hated how she couldn't do that.

"It is, if nothings is all right," he answered.

"You're still doing pretty well at it," she answered, arching an eyebrow at him.

There was tension in his shoulders giving him away, there were shadows so deep she was sure they were going to swallow him, there was … no, he didn't look like everything was alright, but it wasn't obvious either; you had to know what to look for.

"I suppose," he said with a sigh like he wasn't proud of it.

She didn't understand. Well … okay, she did, kinda, because he surely hadn't been exactly pressured by life or death situations to develop this skill, didn't exactly have the same need she had – she didn't even know why she needed to hide every emotion, it just had always seemed … right, it had seemed like the thing she was supposed to do because everyone else did it.

"You know," she said then. "You can just say when you're sick of me and I'll be going. No need for fancy words." She swallowed the other things of top of her tongue, the things she had already said but wanted to say again – she didn't want to be here, she wanted to do something, she had no real interest in actually working with any of them.

He looked at for with one of these frowns that were a little too deep, studying her again for a second. Then … then there was a small twitch in his lips, barely moving the corners of his mouth.

What the fuck.

"Do you really think I haven't worked with people who are much worse than you?" he asked.

"I hoped," she said, regretting it the moment she had said it, dropping her gaze to her feet again.

She sounded different, she knew, and she knew he noticed it – but she didn't know how to feel about it. There was more to it than two words, yes, and she didn't want him to figure it out, but he was smart, too smart.

At first, there was silence. And she was glad about it although she was probably going to over-think, although she was going to lose herself in scenarios, although she was only going to feel terrible.

Merlin shifted his weight to one leg, slowly, carefully.

She tensed anyway, not really knowing why (but she knew, she always knew).

He took a step to the side, standing next to her then, more than an arm's length away, before he leaned against the wall.

"Why do you want to be disliked so badly?" he questioned.

She looked up, finding his gaze on her. She took a long drag so she didn't have to answer right away.

"I'm a hitman," she said like it mean anything.

"You think it makes it easier," he concluded and it should be scaring her, because he was a stranger, a clever stranger who already knew too much about her anyway, but it didn't – that was scaring her.

"I like to think that, yes," she muttered, the smoke leaving through her nose and lips. "It's an excuse – no, it's a reason not to get attached."

She finished her cigarette, stubbing it out on the stone next to her. "I still get attached too easily," she added, quietly, hoping he didn't hear her, but she shouldn't have spoken then.

"And-" She cut herself off before she could make another mistake. There was no use in bearing all of this to a man she didn't know – to anyone, really. She hadn't told Elias, she hadn't told Nik and she sure as hell hadn't told Ylvi. It wasn't that much different with Merlin.

"You're scared," he said, all serious and stern, but the expression on his face wasn't hard, neither was his voice. It was giving her a funny feeling in her stomach. Like she was going to throw up.

"You're also scared," she retorted. It had only been a hunch until now, a feeling but she knew it was true the moment she said it, because he seemed older, more tired, because he wasn't trying to deny it.

He just stood next to her. It wasn't so bad.

The air still stung on her lungs, she was still freezing, she still felt horrible.

"What's the lesson of that?" she asked, not looking at him at first, then slowly turning her head. "Does that make us two people who're very much afraid but don't actually want to admit that because they think it's bad? Or does that make us two stoic people who should know better than that?" It was strange to speak of 'we'.

"Perhaps," he said, looking right past her before his gaze focused on her. She hadn't noticed how brown his eyes were, pale in the gray light, a little darker than normally; she wondered how hers looked to him. (Not that it mattered; that was, what she was telling herself.)

"Perhaps?" she asked, arching her eyebrows.

"Perhaps," he repeated. "Neither of us are who we want to be. And, perhaps, that makes us more similar than we would like."

Her mouth was dry. She wanted to think of a witty comeback, something, anything, but she couldn't, because … well, shit, he was right, obviously. Her first instinct still was to deny it and pretend it wasn't true.

"Maybe," she said with a lame shrug, nothing of it covering it up well enough. "Does that mean you're more honest than you usually are?"

"Yes," he said after a tense moment, letting go of a breath held too long. "I don't want to be."

"Neither do I, but here we are," she said, running a hand through her hair.

There was silence, where they looked at each other, watching each other, and she nearly expected it all too feel uncomfortable, uneasy. It didn't.

"I could use your help," he said, making her arch her eyebrows at him again.

"You've got a hint," she pointed out. "You're smart. You've got people you can trust and who trust you in return."

"Yes," he said with a nod. "But it's not more difficult than that."

"Nothing's ever easy, I guess?" she suggested with a sigh that took the tension she had been storing in her body with it when she let it out.

"I'm afraid so," he replied, another, this time sympathetic, twitch in his lips accompanying his words.

She hesitated. "So … you mean it?" It was a stupid question because he wouldn't ask if he didn't, but … it was hard to imagine anyone would ask her to stay.

"Yes," he said. "You could use something to do, if I'm not mistaken. And I could use the help."

It was different than it had been a couple of days ago. She was free to say no and go, in a way, and it wasn't so bad, in a way, she guessed, though there was guilt eating her now, gnawing at her.

"Alright," she said, feeling a twitch in her own lips. It hurt.

Merlin nodded.

There was something making her breath a little easier, a little better.

She pushed herself from the stone a moment later, slowly sliding down, standing next to him for another moment of silence that was too long.

It was alright. Kinda.