Disclaimer: Don't own anything except Victoria.

A/N: Speaking of Honesty, I have to tell you all something...I wasn't going to post this chapter until mid-tomorrow, but I got so many warm reviews and you guys are all just so great that I had to post early. Keep commenting and I'll post Chapter 4 ASAP, which is already ready and raring to go.

Honesty

They stopped at hotel near the airport. Vincent explained in his casual way that he was supposed to have made a 6:00 a.m. flight three days ago, and that he would probably have to call around a bit to get a decent rate.

The hotel was a decent place, clean, well kept, but not fancy. The single luxury it boasted was the bathroom, which was nearly a third the size of the room. The tub itself was huge, deep oval, enough for two people. Victoria found herself wishing she could take a bath, or better yet, wishing she could move into that hotel room, with its simplicity and luxury in all the right places to suit her tastes.

As it was, she didn't even have a change of clothes. She looked down at her simple button-down shirt and jeans, and the white coat she kept around her to protect her from whatever might be splattered on it. She noticed a thin spray-pattern of dark red. She slipped the coat off, went into the bathroom, began running cold water and unwrapped the hotel soap in an attempt to clean it.

When she came back, Vincent was sitting at the table in the room, the television off, and he was flipping idly through the room service menu.

"You hungry?"

"Do they have room service this late?"

"It's an airport hotel, I'm sure they do."

She had moved up into the space between the two queen size beds. The clock blazed the numbers "3:35 A.M." at her. Sunrise would start to crack the horizon in a few hours. She wondered if the cops had even arrived at her office yet. She wondered if she would ever be able to go back there.

She wondered what in the hell Vincent thought he was doing.

She looked at him over her shoulder, turned slightly. He noticed, looked back at her quizzically.

"You okay?"

"Fine," she said, tightly. "Vincent, will you answer a question?"

"Depends on the question. I won't lie to you."

"Why are you really doing this? I mean, what happened tonight didn't have anything to do with you. You could have just kept quiet, stayed in that room, let those men carry out their business, then disappeared when it was over. No one would have been the wiser and you could have gotten your plane out of L.A. What are you going to do with me?"

He arched an eyebrow. "Well, that's not really 'a' question, it's more like five or six questions. Why did I get involved, what's my interest in you, all of that." He waved his hand idly, almost as if he didn't really know himself. "I guess I just don't like it when people I have business with are mistreated."

She frowned, slowly finished her turn, sank down onto the bed. It really wasn't a large room, they were barely ten, fifteen feet apart. "So what are we going to do now?"

"I figured I'd order some room service, somehow get my shirt cleaned enough to go buy a new one in the morning, get a few hours sleep."

"Do you sleep?"

"Everyone sleeps, Victoria."

"You haven't slept much at all since you came through my door," she said, feeling a little braver. "You act like it, but I can tell."

His eyes, which had been politely focused on her, an American way to show that a person was paying attention to everything someone said, drifted to the right, just barely, losing focus. He was thinking, and not very quickly. "They say the higher the life form, the less sleep is required."

She almost laughed, managed to stop it at the smile. "Higher life forms?"

"Explains why cats sleep all the damn time, doesn't it?"

"You don't like cats," she sighed, realizing he had utterly changed the subject. No, he didn't lie. When he didn't want to talk about something, he just didn't. "You a dog person?"

"Not really any kind of animal person. Except maybe fish. But fish aren't animals, are they?"

"No, they're fish," she said, reaching up to pull her hair out of the ponytail it had been in for far too long. She shook it out, feeling how lank and greasy the locks were. God, she needed a shower.

"You want something to wear?" he asked.

She looked back at him, startled. "I'm sorry?"

"When I go for a new shirt, you want me to pick you up something? What are you, a ten?"

"Junior eleven," she said, feeling slightly modest. She may not have been a beauty queen, but she'd been blessed with a good sized figure. "I'm going to go take a shower, I just can't stand this anymore."

So that was what she did.

She took a very long, very hot shower. She relished the burn, the pain on her arms and legs and back, as the water was possibly too hot. When she finished, she noticed red blotches on her skin, dismissed them. The hotel was polite enough to provide a hairdryer, which she used, using her fingers as a comb. It almost worked, but she was glad that her hair at least felt clean, even if it didn't look too much better.

She put her clothes back on, bra, panties, and shirt, but left the jeans off. She wrapped one of the thick white towels around her waist and went back out into the room, where she found Vincent still sitting in the chair, gazing out the window, lost in his own thoughts.

After a few moments of nothing, after Victoria was quite sure he hadn't even realized she was back in the room, she approached him, picked up the room service menu, and gazed right down into his face.

"Anybody home?"

He abruptly snapped back to her, his eyes glowing for a moment, sunlight on blue glass, and for a single moment, she was afraid of him. Her heartbeat accelerated rapidly, then slowed when he blinked, and there was recognition in his features.

"I'm sorry?"

"Did you order anything?" she asked, holding up the menu, attempting to ignore what had just happened.

"No, I was waiting to see what you wanted." Smoothly, also as if nothing had just happened. Although she'd triggered something. As he looked away, it occurred to her that his expression was actually rather sad.

She went to the telephone, ordered herself a cheeseburger and a cherry Coke, and a club sandwich for him, as he had silent approached her and pointed at the item on the menu as she spoke. He didn't say a word.

"Can I turn the television on?" she asked quietly as they waited for their food. He appeared as if he'd just realized there was a television in the room.

"If you want." He laid himself down on one of the beds, his movements slightly labored. She put the remote down and approached him, going into doctor mode.

"Let me take a look," she said, pushing aside the jacket and shirt before he could object. He let her do as she did best, even looked contrite when she scowled at the blood that was spotting the gauze.

"You popped a stitch," she said, almost accusingly. She looked around in the drawers, found a needle and thread kit. "How's your pain tolerance?"

"Pretty good," he said. "You going to sew me back up?"

"I need to. That could get infected." She removed the gauze, went to get her coat, found a few scraps of fresh gauze where she usually kept it stashed close by, in her pocket, so she could always reach it quickly. She managed to salvage the tape on the old gauze, cleaned his wound with a clean washcloth and some hot water, wished she could get her hands on some hydrogen peroxide, but had him done back up again properly by the time the room service attendant politely rapped on their door. Covering him back up, she went to the door, sighed the bill, and let the man bring the food in. She had a few dollars in her jean pocket, she went to go get it so she could give him a tip.

It was all done in relative silence, except for the small murmurs of polite talk from the attendant. When he was gone, she sat down in the chair Vincent had recently vacated and pulled one of the silver-domed dishes toward her. It was her cheeseburger, and until she smelled it, she'd had no idea how hungry she was.

Vincent tried to pull himself off the bed, but she quickly came to her senses and pushed the rolling table toward him, so he could reach his dinner without having to move. "Drink the water," she told him. "It's good for you."

"Eight glasses a day," he echoed back. "Why do they always say apples keep a doctor away?"

"It means stay healthy and you won't need us," she said, returning to her chair and her meal.

"I'm healthy, and I need you."

"Yeah, well, you're a hit man."

"I prefer assassin," he said, picking up a corner of his club sandwich.

"Really? I guess it sounds more dangerous. How long have you been an assassin?"

He didn't flinch at the question. She guessed all the rules were out the window. No sense in hiding a bunch of secrets, as all the seemed to be able to do right now was spill their guts to each other. After all, she'd told him all her troubles, it was his turn now.

"Six years in the private sector," he said, automatically, as if it were a recording.

"And before that?" she prodded.

"Classified information," he tossed back with a small smile.

"Ah, military. Black ops, CIA, just like in the movies."

"It's a lot more dangerous than the movies make it look. And a lot less glamorous." He seemed to gaze off into the distance, as if remembering something. "Unless you count the night that brought me to your door. That was something out of a movie."

"What happened?"

He told her.

He told her about Max, the cab driver, who seemed to be someone he wasn't. A doer, not a talker. He'd liked him, found him to be open to change, a quick study. Max was good at what he did, even if what he did wasn't what he wanted to do. He knew how fast it would take to get anywhere from anywhere, knew the right routes, knew the light systems, knew everything.

He told her how Ramone had fallen out of the window when he shot him, landing his fat ass on top of Max's cab, and Max throwing a fit. He spoke of it exactly as how he had reacted to it - millions of people die every day in horrible ways, nobody cares. One fat guy falls out of the sky, Max goes to pieces.

Vincent didn't get it. He didn't understand why other people didn't see the world the way he did. As she listened to him, as she had a few times before, Victoria became uneasy. This was how a sociopath sounded.

Contrary to popular opinion, sociopaths were not psychopaths. A psychopath had no morality, no sense of anyone except himself. A sociopath was a person who saw the world in a particular way that was outside of the norm, outside of society. They believed their view to the point where they couldn't understand why others didn't see it, as well.

She didn't know whether to be fascinated or terrified by him. But either way, he had not hurt her. To the contrary, he had saved her. Those men most likely would have killed her, or at least tortured her trying to get the information they wanted. And she hadn't even thanked him.

What she didn't know was, why he had done it. But as she listened, there seemed to be no reasons as to why he had kept Max the entire night. Sure, in the beginning it had seemed like simple protection, making sure he wouldn't tell anyone. But after Max tried to get attention in the middle of downtown L.A. and had gotten robbed, it would have made more sense for Vincent to just shoot him as well, get rid of him. Obviously the man was a liability now, just getting more people involved.

But no, Vincent had calmly told him that if he attracted attention, people were going to get killed "who didn't need to be."

Victoria watched Vincent's face as he said it. They didn't need to be killed. She had never really considered the inside of a sociopathic killer before. She didn't think that a killer cared who they killed. Then again, someone like Vincent was smart - don't kill more than what's necessary, it also attracts attention.

"Vincent," she said softly, when he'd paused to tell her about the jazz club, which she did want to hear, but she had a question first.

"What?"

"I doesn't bother you to kill people, does it?"

He seemed unsure as to how to answer. "Mostly, no."

"You didn't care that you killed those kids in the alley. They seemed to deserve it, the way you described them."

"Yeah."

"Well, it seems to me," she wet her lips, wondering how much trouble she was about to get in for her next statement, "that you were just saying those things to get inside Max's head. To manipulate him."

"Yes." Didn't even blink.

"Isn't that kind of like lying?"

"No. Everything I said was true. The only difference was, I didn't care about it. He did."

She scowled at him. "See, I still don't understand. You don't care whether people live or die. You only kept Max alive because you needed him. Why did you save me? You don't need me."

He stared at her for a long second. "You know, it is slightly rude to interrupt someone's story, when you just want to talk about yourself," he said, a bit admonishing. She felt her mouth snap shut.

"Sorry, go ahead." Although she couldn't believe a man who took lives for money was reprimanding her for rudeness.

"You know, there are times when I feel bad about killing someone," Vincent said. "I just don't let it get to me."

"When?"

"That night. Max and I went to a jazz club, and there was this guy there, playing the trumpet. And I mean, he was good. He was playing Miles Davis' Spanish Key as if he'd written the thing. He was wonderful. I had to buy him a drink, I asked a waitress to send him over to our table. And then she told me who he was - he was Daniel, the next guy on my list."

"You mean, you had to kill him?"

"He came over to the table and we talked. He told me some crazy stories, every one of them true. I actually felt bad for him when I found out he'd missed his chance to become a professional player because of his time in jail. If only he hadn't gone, he would have become one of the greats, and we would never have had to meet." Vincent let out a small sigh, barely audible. "But it was cruel, playing with him like that. So I let him know who I was, and you should have seen his face fall. He liked me, you know. I could tell. And even Max, who I think was a liar when he said he didn't like jazz that much, he was starting to enjoy himself. But Max talked me into giving Daniel a chance, which didn't take much, because I really didn't want to kill him."

Victoria thought of a question, wondered if she should ask it. Realizing it was not about herself, she dared to voice it. "What would have happened if you hadn't shot him? I mean, wouldn't your employers have been mad?"

Vincent shrugged. "I would have crossed that bridge when I came to it. Anyway, Daniel didn't get the chance. I asked him a question about Miles Davis and he got it wrong." Vincent blinked, looked away. "You know, Victoria, I'm not a sadistic man. I don't like watching other people's pain. I did him, I do everyone, as fast as I can. I don't drag it out."

She nodded, looked away. What the hell difference did it make what she thought, anyway? It was becoming more and more disconcerting, the way Vincent seemed to be trying to justify himself. As if she were a possible disciple to his sociopathic view of the world.

"Victoria?" came his voice, feeling very distant.

She looked up, blinked, waited expectantly.

"Do you think I could take a shower? Those sponge baths just haven't been cutting it lately."

"Not with the last strip of gauze I've got taped to you, you can't," she said.

"Damn. Well, I'm going to have to clean up a bit more rigorously than just a sponge bath." He started to get up, and she rose from her seat, to assist him. "No," he said, putting out a hand. "No, it's okay, I'm fine. Finish your dinner...order some desert if you want. I'll be fine." And he dragged himself into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

A/N: I don't usually do this, but there are so many of you, I wanted to tell you all how great you are one on one. So here we go---

acrossthenight--I'm glad Victoria fits into this mix. I didn't want to see Vincent end up with a Mary Sue, if he ends up with anyone at all. Heh heh. Besides, I have no idea in hell how I'm going to make this story work, as Vincent is totally the "institutionalized type...anybody home?" down to the bone. So we'll just have to see what mess I make of it.

SweetArwen--The movie was brilliant, wasn't it? I saw it twice in the same week. I want to see it again at least one more time so I can get the mood of this fanfic right later.

Warm Mittens--Thanks for the comments...although I don't know about "brilliant," but hey, I'll take it. Don't worry, you will find out what happens. I know how you feel, when people start a good fanfic and don't finish it. That's not me.

Sargonne--You know, I used to worry that my characters were going to become Mary Sues, but then I figured out that they can't be, because for a character to be good, they have to be real. That's why Vincent and Max were both so great, they were real characters, 3-D people you could empathise with on some level. My opinion is that if your character turns out to be a Mary Sue, she ceases to be a good character. Some people like Mary Sues, and in the context of superheroes, sure, she's fine. But not in real-world stories like this. So thanks, I appreciate the compliment.

firegoddess164--Max and Annie...well, to be honest, I don't see a place for them in this story, but you never know. Max will come up, as you can see from chapters 2 and 3, in Vincent's head and eventually in Victoria's, and Annie will appear there, too, but I don't know if they'll show up in the flesh.

FREAK18--Thank you so much for what you said! I didn't realize that my settings had been defaulted that way. THanks for clearing that up!

Bryony Cel--Yeah, it did seem too easy, didn't it? I just couldn't buy that a guy like that could bite it so easy. Like he said, "I do this for a living!"

Yaaamish--I shall try not to disappoint you. I appreciate your honesty. I hope you're sticking with me so far.

Bequile--aww, shucks, hero? (looks all bashful) Same feelings about "brillaint," but I'll take that too. Thanks for your encouraging review!

KEEP READING!