She stopped talking and tucked her hands between her knees. Mark grabbed her gently by the wrists and slid his hands until her palms rested on his. He was surprised by how clammy her palms were. He didn't say anything, just held her hands for a few minutes.
Finally, she spoke. "They messed up, thinking I was broken. If I had been, I would never have joined the army. I would have stayed under the thumb of my stepfather my entire life. Done his bidding, been his toy. They forgot that I could bide my time until I could make a move they couldn't counter. It was just so easy, doing what they told me. I didn't have to think, didn't have to pretend that I knew how to get through each day on my own. I didn't have to pretend that I knew how to interact with other people, that I knew what it was like to be a normal person. It was so easy to just be a tool, to just sit and let someone else think for me. But I didn't pick the right people to think for me, shouldn't have let anyone think for me. But I was so tired of trying to pretend that life was even worth living that the chance to prove that it wasn't was too much for me to pass by."
She lifted her eyes and looked at him. Her gaze was clear, but pained. "Do you know what it's like, to have to live knowing that you sold your soul for a false sense of peace? To know that you fought for nothing you believed in, but so that some power crazed men could consolidate their grip on the world? To know that you brought so much pain to so many families, and for nothing? The final irony is that, at the end, my stepfather was one of the men in charge, one of the echelon who had directed my killings. Had I continued on that path, I'd just have ended up under his thumb again."
She shook herself and slipped her hands from his. "I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to kill. It sickens me on a level that you'd never believe that my hands took your cousin's life. I don't want power, I don't want to dictate what is and isn't right for the world. Given the choice, I would love to just sit in my garden and play, growing things. There is something incredibly calming about gardening, about being surrounded by uncomplicated forms of life.
"I just can't sit by and let anyone be slaves. I can't. They, the people in the plants, they don't mind being what they are. They don't demand to be let out of the bulbs… well, not most of them. But they're dying. And I can't sit in my garden and play while that happens.
"So, here I am. One very flawed person, trying her hardest to come to a solution that everyone can live with. So I can live with myself." She lapsed into silence again, and they sat on the couch for a few moments, neither saying a word.
He stood and walked into the kitchen. She heard water running, but stayed where she was. Her gaze was centered on her hands. She looked at the various small scars around her knuckles, fingers danced lightly over each other until Mark came back with two glasses of water. She felt strangely at peace, having finally confessed. Whatever came next, at least it would be real.
"Here," he said, handing her one. She accepted and gulped most of the liquid down quickly, saving only the last few swallows to spin about in the bottom of her glass.
"I can't say that I really understand all of what you just said, but from the sound of it, you screwed up big time," he said. "And have spent some unspecified period of time trying to recover from it. You know, it's funny. Effie and I have talked, wondering what had happened to you that would steal the light from your eyes, the laughter from your throat. I'm not sure you even notice it when it happens, but it's often that you will just… stop being happy, all of a sudden. As is whatever it was that pleased you cannot fight the weight of your past.
"I just never thought it would be what you say it is."
She laughed, a quick bark. "Yeah, that's a shock. You guys never figured me for an inter-dimensional reformed assassin. I can't believe that wasn't near the top of your list; I mean it's just so common."
"Is that why you are, why you could take people down so easily?"
She nodded. "Training, and lots of it. Granted, plant reflexes make some of that stuff easier, but none of it is instinctual. It's work, and hard work. You have to learn how to assess a situation before you enter it. You could have a minute or a second, but you still need to know how to see what's there. To know who you have to take down first. T know how to take them out without putting yourself into a corner you can't get out of.
"Actually, the office fight was fairly simple. I had plenty of time to assess you guys, to know who was jumpy and who would need to be taken down first because they kept fiddling with their gun and were going to be more of a danger to everyone else in the room then they would be to me."
"You're kidding. You took David down because he was going to shoot someone else? I know the man is a bit trigger happy, but that's one of the reasons he was there."
"He's not trigger happy, he's just looking for an excuse to kill someone. That man has a very yucky mind. But yes, I took him out first so he wouldn't screw up and hurt one of you guys. I'm tough, I've been shot too many times to count, and it takes a lot more to kill me off than it would you. And I'd hate having to live with more deaths on my conscience."