"So let me get this straight. You don't know what to do to make her useful… but you want her assigned to your department because she might turn out to be useful…" he says, frowning at me. "You don't have a problem with that logic?"

"That's not what I said. I said I have an experiment to run on her. Never said it will be useful. But since we're on the subject – you insist on using that word when what you mean, really, is usefully deadly. That's what's confusing the matter. And I did write you a report on how very deadly she still is. She'll just suck at being a spy because she's more of a time capsule than a person," I state calmly. Pissing him off visibly, though in the end he just lets out a frustrated sigh and asks me what it is I want to do with the subject. As he still insists on calling her because of course. Is there anything more dehumanizing to call a person?

"Oh alright - you want the truth, here goes. Since she's of no use to us I was gonna show her Star Wars and vicariously experience the big plot twist for the first time again - or as close as I'm ever going to get in a world where there's no one who doesn't know who Luke Skywalker's father is. And before you start ranting at me about how it's a waste of Hydra resources, let me just remind you – what I do here is extremely stressful. Was before you added what amounts to a timetraveller to the mix. And if I break you have no one to replace me with," I add, since his what does that have to do with anything expression is impossible to ignore. "Moral code wise that is, because we both know there's plenty of others doing research similar to mine. They just wouldn't be anywhere as content being stuck in Siberia for years on end. What I'm trying to say is… All work and no play makes Jack go on a killing spree. So you're gonna let me play for a bit. It's not like you'll be losing anything by it because as we established she is completely useless to you."

"You want to show her Star Wars," he repeats, clearly just to win himself some time to digest that little speech that managed to make me sound human. Which is the last thing one wants to appear before Hydra higher-ups – and there goes another testament to how far from my usual, content self I am these days.

"I want to show her the original trilogy. Let's save the prequels for when we need to torture her," I grin, unable to help myself. "I'll monitor her brain functions if that helps. So we can pretend I did it for science. But just this once I'm doing something just for fun. Because if I don't I'll start screaming."

"You have been exhibiting signs of stress," he comments, somehow still forcing himself to pretend this is a serious conversation. Because what else it could be, both of us being such serious people working for this very serious let's-take-over-the-world secret organization…

"Is that your way of saying that yes, I can borrow the scary Russian killing machine for a Star Wars marathon…?"

He watches me unblinkingly for a few long seconds. Then, he just nods, because if course he does. I left him with no other options.

"Do it tonight. We need to run some further tests on her tomorrow."

"On it," I say, jumping out of the chair and hightailing it out of his office before he can change his mind.

Less than half an hour later that's exactly what I do. I put the movie on, instruct Dottie to keep her eyes on the screen and try not to react to all the things I'm saying under my breath as the droids are making their way across the desert. And...

"You mean it?" she says, just as quietly after I've summed up my plans for her. "You're just going to…"

"Yes," I confirm. "Are you in? Because we've pretty firmly established you've lost the will to live. But if there's a choice to make, me personally, I'd rather die somewhere nice. Watching the sunset, sipping some deadly but painless poison, leaving behind a corpse that will raise more questions than the leopard on the Mount Kilimanjaro. Definitely preferable to dying in a fire. And I'm not saying it just because that's what my last near death experience was like."

"It does sound more pleasant than the alternative," she says, shooting me a quick sideways look before pretending she's all about the double suns again. "And you'll get your revenge this way."

"I'm not being vengeful," I reply. Possibly lying. Even I have trouble telling at this point. "True, it turns out I don't actually like being the bad guy, even if I always accepted I am one. But this isn't me taking some of these assholes with me, this is me faking my death in a really convincing manner so they'll never even bother looking for me."

"Our deaths," she reminds.

"Right. Faking our deaths. Double the losses of what they consider their property," I add sounding just a touch bitter. So maybe I am vengeful.

We lapse into silence for a few minutes. She only breaks it because she reaches a point when she just had it with all those droid shenanigans. "What is this movie even about…?" she says, turning to me.

"What are most stories about? The good guys winning. Meanwhile back here in the real world…" I grin, though I doubt the expression has any amusement in it. "We can go there, you know. I think they shot those Tattoine scenes around Morocco somewhere. And since we're headed to Africa anyway…"

She shoots me a sideways look because even though she took the news about me blowing up the lab in just a few days' time in her stride she did not see this new information coming. Well, of course she didn't. She's known me for less than two weeks – not to mention she's about the only person in the whole compound that has no idea why I can't show my face around those parts. Or anywhere for that matter.

"I mean… we still have two and a half movies to go," I sigh in answer to her unspoken question. "Do you really want to know…?"

She does, apparently.

"Alright – backstory time. There's one thing you absolutely need to know about me and that is that I used to be a proper scientist," I say, with as much emphasis as I can possibly put on the words. "I wasn't always stuck at a clandestine evil lab in Middle of Nowhere, Siberia. I published, I was respected in my field, I made a bunch of serious breakthroughs... I was, at least on the surface, a well-respected law abiding citizen. That's the kind of people Hydra prefers anyway. Those who can hide in plain sight. I was all that. Obviously I had to alter the facts a little to achieve that because namedropping either of my parents? Not a great idea. At least my father had the decency to get killed by one of his lab rats before he could do any damage to me. But my mother… Yeah, she always considered brain just something she can tweak around according to her designs. I was around ten when she got institutionalized."

That, again, startles her enough to look away from the screen, even if only for a second. "I know, right? A scientist too mad for Hydra. Because I kid you not, they're the ones who got her locked up and got me out of there. Good guy points for the mad scientists," I say, my voice sounding more tired than anything else. "And before you ask yes, of course I spent a lot of my childhood with electrodes on my head. The point is they were both their own brand of evil and known for it too, so if anyone asked I was an orphan. Which was fine with me. Yeah, yeah, I know, your sad backstory still beats my sad backstory. You just needed that for context. To understand whose legacy I am. Meanwhile everybody just thought I was this brilliant child prodigy and so they treated me as a person. It was… Yeah… I didn't like that. In that buried deep down way. Not being treated as the pariah I knew I was was getting on my nerves. In retrospect I can tell I was always going to snap. I just didn't expect it to be so dramatic."

"What it is you did exactly…?" she asks, eyes still fixed on the screen showing the panicking droids.

"I was at a conference and I was being talked down from my groundbreaking ideas – as happens when you discovered a paradigm shift and most people aren't up to broadening their horizons. And at some point someone thought it was a good idea to get extra condescending. Now what he said was listen up young lady – and who doesn't love hearing that? Anyway. What I heard was I don't need all my blood where it is if I'm being perfectly honest... So yeah... I stabbed him. An unarmed, seventy year old man who didn't do a whole lot to provoke me. And I did it in front of a lot of witnesses."

"And that's why you're banned from Africa," she says, sounding just a touch confused, still.

"No, that was just the start of what's going to be one of the best parts of my yet-to-be-written memoirs. Because it will read like Princess Bride. Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge... bunch of local mercenaries breaking me out of a prison transport, Striker glaring at me like he could force choke me… He was really pissed off," I say, even though that doesn't begin to cover it. "See, I was the dependent one. For years he could just leave me to my own devices. No need to waste manpower so someone keeps an eye on me while I'm socializing with the other science types. I've been going from one scientific conference to the next and nothing eventful ever happened. And next thing he knows I'm calling him from prison and asking if we have some extra evil layers because I'm currently wanted in at least two countries…"

"Who is this Striker?" she asks frowns. "You have mentioned him before."

"He used to oversee me. He's the reason I can pull this off too. He'll hear I got myself killed by running towards an explosion rather than away from it, and all just to save what amounts to Hydra property because I saw her as a person and worth saving…? He won't question that story for a second. He always considered me… afflicted with weakness. Creepy way of putting has remnants of a conscience," I say, rolling my eyes before refocusing my attention on the twin setting suns.

Dottie says nothing, only watches in silence for a while. When she speaks it's in the same vein I just did – a whole lot of unsolicited backstory, all spoken in a dismissive tone of someone who yes, lived through all that, but long since got over it and now merely treats it as a story. Something that, as all stories, only has the power she gives it.

I would find it funny, how she got the concept of quid pro quo, Clarisse even though I haven't gotten around to catching her up on that gem of popculture yet. But having heard what her childhood was like I feel like I might not laugh again. Ever.

"Makes sense," I say, realizing she's done talking. "That you'd want to be able to at least be the one who writes the ending."

Because I need to say something, since this wall between us prevents me from doing the obvious thing of putting my arm around her and lying about everything being alright.

She doesn't reply, but in the reflection on the screen I see a sad smile cross her face for just a heartbeat. "Few more days. Then it'll be over, one way or another."

"Few more days," she nods to herself.

On the screen in front of you, meanwhile, a certain mobile battle station blows up as the good guys cheer, having won the day. It's that kind of a story. The kind of a deal you presumably get if you're one of them. Not that I'd know...