standard disclaimer- i own no characters except those i've created. please review and let me know if i've made any mistakes, or if i should even keep writing this one!

Alex O'Connell stood at the exit ramp of the ocean liner and scanned the waiting crowd with tired blue eyes. He yawned hugely as he hiked his worn leather bag over a broad shoulder and regretted the absence of the familiar weights of his revolvers from their accustomed place under his jacket. He was looking, apparently, for a short blond with a studious mind that would make any professor of archaeology proud, at least according to the letter his mothers friend had sent. Admittedly it wasn't much of a description to go on, but Alex figured that once the student appeared he'd be able to recognize Alex from the fact that he stood a head above anyone else in the crowd.

As Alex looked over the other travelers and their waiting relatives he thought over the concept of finally setting down and organizing his copious amounts of notes on ancient Egypt findings into papers that would wow the current theorists. He wondered what it would be like to teach. He'd never done so before, but his mothers old classmate had been desperate for anyone with recent experience, and somehow Evie O'Connell, his dear mother, had talked him into it.

"Ohhh! I'm sooo late!" a frantic voice rose about the gathered crowd, and Alex watched in amusement as a young girl skid on red boots, colliding violently with a rotund mans bulging stomach. "I'm sorry!" she yelped, jumping back so her knee length black skirt fluttered appealingly around smooth legs. In all his years of roaming the world Alex hadn't found a pair of legs that could match his mothers, but the girl who was nervously scanning the departing passengers came close. Her blond hair swung around her head and caught the sun, skipping gold highlights across her rosy cheeks. She tugged nervously at the hem of her red vest and bit her lower lip as she met his pale eyes with her own emerald.

Alex couldn't look away as she smiled in relief and started toward him. He lost sight of her momentarily as she squeezed between passengers who towered over her own diminutive form, but he found her again as she pushed two men aside to reach him.

"Alex O'Connell I presume?" she held out a hand to shake and gripped his with a delicate but firm shake.

"Yes." Alex returned the shake in kind and smiled down charmingly. "Can I help you? I'm waiting for someone, but I can certainly try and find your parents or something before he gets here." Alex released her hand as she yanked it back.

"I knew you couldn't take me seriously." She muttered venomously. "Men." She threw her hands in the air, soft black sleeves fluttered in the wind.

"Excuse me?" Alex asked, confused.

The girl placed her hands on her hips and watched him with defiant eyes, daring him to contradict her. "I am Clarke Parkesburg. I am Professor Ramie's aide. He sent me here to pick you up. Now will you come with me or what?"

"Can I apologize or will you just bite my head off?" Alex asked as she negotiated the traffic with a skill that left him almost breathless as his heart threatened to pound right out of his chest. The tiny car she drove weaved in and out of traffic like a cat, and she seemed to have the same sixth sense that had felines dodging out of the way of large feet about to step on tails as she cut in between a semi truck and a large family sedan.

"Go ahead and apologize, I have a feeling that you're going to be doing a lot of it. Its prudent to get them out of the way as they come."

"I'm not a complete jerk you know." Alex protested, "Anyone could have taken you for a child with they way you barreled through the crowd with no manners t'all!"

"Nice apology." She quirked an eyebrow as she stopped at a red light, then smirked as she made a right turn from a left lane, cutting off a man in a large truck with a happy wave.

"I apologize for mistaking you for a child." He managed with stiff British formality. "Though, with the way you drive, I have a feeling I hit closer to the mark than you think."

"Stuck up Brit." She muttered as she shrieked to a halt in front of a dignified old building, columns of plaster shot into the sky, seeming to connect with the roof through chance, as if they couldn't be bothered to reach higher to inconvenience themselves. Alex had always loved the musty dampness and old purity of the pyramids as they ranged themselves in Egypt, but buildings like the one in front of him where just as prideful in his mind. The tiny kraut of a vehicle looked almost ridiculous parked in front of the museums dignity. The tiny woman who jumped out of it, however, would have seemed even more out of place if she hadn't grabbed a white lab coat from where it was perched on the drivers seat, then proceeded to haul it over her shoulders before bundling her hair into a tidy bun behind her head. "Coming or not?" she asked icily as she started up the stairs. With a smile and a nod Alex stuck his hands in his jacket pocket.

"Lead on Macduff." When she turned to glare he only chuckled and shrugged. "Dry British humor."

"Right." She turned back around to continue up the stairs, "Next time," she muttered, "Warn me."

The Museum was cold, but with the hint of ages and majesty that tended to take people around and through, just to catch a glimpse of the treasures of the past that might be around the next corner. It was a museum, and Alex felt very much at home as Clarke walked him through the exhibits and toward the offices in the restricted area behind them. She had to show an id card, which she wore clipped to her jacket pocket, before the guard in the black suit would let them through. The stalwart man nodded, glared at Alex, but let them both pass.

"That was Jared, he'll remember you, but the next time you pass you need one of these." She waved the card, "Or he won't let you through, doesn't matter who you are."

"Nice to know the security around here is top notch."

"It has to be. We get many different exhibits on loan from countries all around the world. In fact..." she glanced back, pausing in her quick stride to gesture at a long pair of doors, "Behind there we just got a shipment from Egypt, very special and hush, hush. The Professor didn't want to mess with it until you got here. He thinks you'll like a lot of it."

"Yes, I think my mother mentioned something of it." Alex stared at the doors as she began to walk again, wondering if anything behind them would be new to him.

"Well, come on." Clarke sighed impatiently when she realized he wasn't behind her.

"I apologize again my lady." Alex bowed slightly cheeky, and set off at his own pace. He caught up with her in a few strides and adjusted so he wouldn't overtake her.

"He's right in here..." she opened a door and paused, blinking as the sight overtook her other senses. "Professor?" she breathed out before backing out quickly, bumping into Alex's solid chest. She shook as she turned to bury her face in his shoulder and screamed.

Alex had seen death before, but rarely had the blood been so abundant. It dripped from the walls, the ceiling, ran down the windows tinting everything in pink with the sun streaming through the glass. Papers stuck to every surface, stained to uselessness with red. He was sitting behind his desk, his chest cavity ripped into, several ribs poked into vital organs and his neck was broken, leaving his head dangling behind him like a rag dolls. One arm was dangling from the shoulder, again, broken like a toy, but the other arm...

Alex held Clarke's head to his shoulder as Jared ran, his shiny black shoes echoing down the dim hallway. He skid to a halt beside Alex, drew a pistol in an easy movement that suddenly made Alex miss his father, and shook as he took in the sight of the Professors other arm, lying on the floor just inside the door, his hand open in a claw, as if reaching for the door.

They didn't enter the room. There was nothing they could do but call the police. So they sat there, in the hallway on a bench Jared had confiscated from the showing rooms as the Cops did their jobs and questioned them carefully. They treated Clarke like she was glass, as if a hint of hardness would crack her. She had pushed Alex away early, insisting she was not going to be hysterical. But he watched her carefully as she told the police that yes, she had seen the Professor, just that morning.

"He looked up from his papers and laughed. He told me he had a special job for me to do, then strung me along with hints until he admitted that it was just a trip to the harbor."

"The harbor?" The kind cop had a mustache that was full and brown, he seemed to think it made up for the lack of hair on his head as he scratched the corner of his lip with the cap of his pen.

"Yes. He found an Archeologist to teach his Egypt class this fall. Alex O'Connell." She gestured to Alex who had been listening carefully, determined to glean as much information out of the police talking quietly outside the door. He nodded to acknowledge the connection, but didn't bother with an answer as the coroner wheeled a white draped cart from the office. Clarke took a gulping breath and clenched her eyes shut, forcing the tears away. She tried to tug away as Alex placed his hands on her shoulders to pivot her into a hug. But after the initial resistance she collapsed, letting his arms band around her, for his comfort as much as her own. She clenched his shirt and let the tears fall.

"Officer?"

"O'Malley." He supplied, his expression grim as he watched the coroner walk steadily down the long marbled hall with his body.

"Could we do this later perhaps?" Alex asked coldly as Clarke sobbed into his shirt.

O'Malley nodded carefully as he sighed. After 21 years of homicide he knew that what one person could do to another was gruesome, but even he had flinched at his first look into the blood soaked room. The girl was on her last rope, and the man holding her looked very close to violence himself. "Take her on home. We'd appreciate a talk tomorrow afternoon if you don't mind stopping by the station. Say four?"

"We'll be there." Alex agreed after picking her up and, with Clarke in the cradle of his arms, starting down the hall.

"Take care of her." O'Malley gestured with his pen, and smirked a bit at Alex's scoff.

"I'm after pouring her into a trank and a bed. But she'll be coherent tomorrow."

"If you don't mind me saying, you seem to be taking this in stride."

"I work with dead men everyday Detective."

"But they've been dead a while." He commented making a little note in his book.

"Depends on the man." And with that last statement Alex nodded to Jared, who watched after them both with worried eyes, and exited down the same hall the Professor had been taken down. He's fished the keys from her jacket pocket and placed her in the orange car before she could protest as he slipped behind the wheel, adjusting the seat as he was scrunched up to the steering column itself.

"You don't drive my..."

"You're not getting a choice. Where am I taking you?" he shot out as he pressed the automatic locks and strung the seatbelt over her shoulders.

"Home." She sighed and leaned her head back against the headrest.

"And where's that at?"

"Turn left at the corner, I'll guide you from there."

Alex groaned and turned away as a bright light shone in his eyes.

"Go away!" he shouted and flailed his arm in the general direction of the assailant, forgetting, for a moment, that he had no room to flail. He grunted as he rolled off the couch and found himself staring at a red shag carpet.

"Time to wake your lazy butt up." a quiet voice had him pushing himself off the floor to face the small girl framed by an open window.

Her eyes were red from crying, her cheeks pale, her hands still trembled slightly as she smoothed her black robe and crossed her arms.

"Have a heart," Alex climbed back on the couch and turned his back to the window, and the girl, "And go away."

"I need my keys."

"Well, you're not getting them." He replied. "Now go back to sleep, or read a book, take a shower you look like shit."

"I look like shit?" she studied the man who had carried her up to her apartment and dumped her into bed. He'd ordered her to change, going through her drawers until he found a long sleep shirt and flung it at her. He stomped out, threatening that if she hadn't changed for bed by the time he came back, he'd do it for her. So while she thought of interesting tortures to lay on his lap, she changed and waited for his return. He came back an hour later, mumbling about Americans pharmacies and their rude pharmacists. He stormed right in, pinched her nose, popped a pill in her mouth and clamped it shut so she had no hope of spitting the tranquilizer out. He did it several times, then made her chug a glass of water to wash it all down after the fact. She swallowed in pure defense, and attacked his arms with her nails. Half an hour later, too numbed down by medication, she fell asleep.

When she woke she felt as if she'd been coshed over the head with something very heavy. She got to her feet carefully and groaned as she pulled a robe on over her shirt. Then she grinned as she spotted the legs poking out over the arms of her couch. He slept in his pants, the top button undone, and had stripped to an undershirt, which meant the claw marks on his muscled forearms stood out in sharp relief against his tan.

"Serves you right." She muttered and flung open the curtains.

"Yes, you look like shit." He repeated, not in a very good mood. He felt like he'd just gotten to sleep on this thing she laughingly called a couch. He was a good two feet too tall to lie on it comfortably, but he wasn't going to leave a heavily medicated girl alone in the night. He'd gotten up every hour, and checked on her. She cried in her sleep.

She watched with some amusement as he curled his legs up, trying to fit himself to the couch. She knelt down so that her mouth was to his ear and whispered, "You do know that I have a guest room?"

The silence was so deep Clarke figured she could have shouted a curse to the gods and the silence would smother it. That is, until Alex started to laugh, and in laughing he turned over, looked at her, and began to cry.

"I hate you." He managed through the tired tears.

"Well I hate you back." Clarke sniffed, "I'm going to take a shower. Apparently, I look like shit."