He had met her "by chance" six times at a coffee shop near her new flat. It took him almost 45 minutes to drive there in the busy London traffic. He luckily didn't need to wait long, her schedule was perfectly fixed. He hadn't expected her to be a woman of strictness by the way she spoke during their first meeting at the hospital, but there it was. She experimented minutely with her coffee order but it stuck to the same principles most days.

He looked her up more thoroughly after the second meeting. Was he paranoid? Perhaps, but M supported him enough to run a full background check. They had every bit of information from every digital or online system available on her.

Olivia Grayson, 31 (older than she looked); grew up with two sisters and her parents in Luton, UK until she started tertiary education in London. Worked for Her Majesty's EPC (Emergency Planning College) for nearly ten years; broke into the game young, she was cited as a "strategically brilliant mind." Most of her work was counter-terrorism and natural disaster preparedness. Five vehicular strikes on her record- all speeding violation, but no other criminal activity. Reported missing by her neighbor nine months ago, investigation uncovered a video of her abduction off her street corner. Currently attending physical rehabilitation and extensive psychological therapy to cope with her ordeal.

The reports he had read of the captives accounts burned his memory in a way he couldn't quite cope with. He knew it was because he had a face to the reports, had met the girls that had experienced this tragedy. One thing he had noted in those files was that they all shared a common thread- Olivia Grayson. She had held them together during the worst and brightened their day during their best.

Calm, collected and kind, those were the words that had him sitting in a cramped coffee shop chair on Thursday morning. She intrigued him, someone so ordinary, no training, no backup, no hope, and yet she had been the rock in the storm. When M had discovered his excursions most mornings she smiled at him in a motherly way that annoyed him.

"What are we at, seven?" He snapped his head up to see a warmly dressed brunette with a small smile of mirth on her face. In her hands were two cups. She settled in across from him before sliding his now freezing cold cup towards herself and the warm replacement towards him. She leaned back, watching him with quiet contemplation as she sipped from her cup.

Neither spoke. It suited them.

"Excuse me, miss?" Olivia turned her head to see an older woman shuffling over to their table.

"Mrs. Jensen!" Olivia stood immediately and embraced the woman was a warm hug. Her male companion could not help but notice the slight cringe on her face at the contact. It was one thing he observed, any physical contact caused her displeasure. He was curious to know if it was the physical wounds or the psychological ones. Five minutes later the chatty woman left. Olivia reseated herself.

Silence resumed.

"Why did you embrace her?" The question came out and he forced himself not to regret it.

"It was wanted and expected." She replied, eyes on his.

"But it makes you obviously uncomfortable."

"So? Half of life makes me obviously uncomfortable, but I live anyway."

"Why?"

She paused a moment, cup suspended a few inches from the table, eyes searching his for a moment.

"Because if I didn't, what kind of world would we live in?"

"You think you're that pivotal to society?"

"I am to those who care about me and to those who I care about."

That had him mute. Their conversations often went this way. It was small talk that first time. The walk around the hospital was filled with observational comedy and gossip the patient had picked up on. Who knew the halls were so chatty? They had transitioned into the serious topics their first "chance meeting." It was Queen and Country, moral grey areas, sex trade incline, death, murder, love, and life as a whole.

This was why he drove 45 minutes, for the coffee and for the conversation.

"I won't be around for a while." He refocused on her.

He merely lifted his eyebrows.

"My parents are coming in." He smiled minutely. He had met them in passing (no matter how hard he tried to avoid them) when she was still in the hospital. He couldn't help but laugh as he had heard fading voice. Her "I want the funeral transcripts ASAP" as her first words to her family made everything just a little bit more okay.

"You seem thrilled." She snorted in reply.

"I will inform them you will be attending dinner every night and that they can stay at your flat." She threw it out flippantly.

"They'll think I'm courting you."

"They think every male that speaks to me is courting me." She smiled conspiratorially at him. He looked at her, now in health and vitality. Her completion had improved, her eyes brightened and face filled out. Four months had done her well. She was lovely in a quiet understated kind of way. She drew looks when she made herself known, but did not call for attention. He enjoyed the comfortable and calming air she produced in abundance. He felt himself settle into the seat.

"Why is that?" She looked on confused. He explained further. "Why are you not being courted?"

She rolled her eyes, the exaggerated look on her face a cross between disgust and exasperation. It looked out of place on such a mature individual but somehow… it made him want to laugh, loudly, publically, honestly.

"My mother has been asking me that for years." He looked on expectantly. Eventually, three sips from her cup, two curious looks around the café and one clearing of the throat later she caved.

"I have no desire to put time and effort into a relationship that is filled with the dull making of small talk. Most men, no matter how everyone claims to the moon and back that the world has progressed, expect me to quit my job and play house." He felt surprised by the vehement words. She seemed so thoroughly frazzled. She sat forward, leaning her ribs against the table edge and began speaking in low angry whispers. "I had this coworker when I started at the EPC. He and I had an understanding, I thought anyway, and he asked me to dinner. I agreed. A year later he starts on about how great it will be when we have a home, how I will want for nothing, how home education was really the way to go. What. Great. Fun." She leaned back. He took a sip, eyebrows raised.

"Who the fuck says that is what I want to do with the rest of my life? I respect those stay at home mothers whose dreams involve papier-mâché and field trips. But good god, I was running local emergency drills for eastern London when I was 25. I coordinated the second largest evacuation in British history last year. But obviously I don't know what I want. Obviously, secretly I am in dire need to have his children and throw away everything I have ever worked for so that his offspring don't have to go down the street to learn arithmetic!"

She was panting by the end, red faced and a little shaky. She had these wild, burning brown eyes. Nostrils flared, gaze sharp as daggers. Every bit of mettle he knew she possessed was out to play at that moment. He ran her monologue through his mind once again and without his permission he sipped his cup and replied with as much fire as he could.

"What a prick."

"THANK YOU!" She practically screamed it, hands flew out in agreement. She seemed so gratified.

In that moment nothing in the world could stop what happened next. The betrayal and loss of the only woman he ever fully loved. The terrors he had seen, the terrors he had committed. The moment of realization that he was a monster, the moment of realization that he couldn't bring himself to care. The bodies of the women he slept with only to find them dead within a week (sometimes hours) after their liaison. None it dampened the honest, hearty, full and unbelievably freeing hysterical laughter that bubbled out of him.

GOOD LORD ITS BEEN FOREVER. This was an off-the-cuff revisiting. No promises it will continue (sorry ladies and gents) I watched Skyfall yesterday and thought "hey, don't I have a story…? Shit."

Perhaps more to follow :D