storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2010-03-02 02:02 pm
storypaint) wrote2010-03-02 02:02 pm
Magic Knight Rayearth] The Sharp Edge of Your Smile (Clef/Presea)
Title: The Sharp Edge of Your Smile
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth [Mafia AU]
Length: 4055
Prompt: n/a
Pairing: Clef/Presea; various other background characters
Other: There is no excuse for this. It started with this fic by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
allira_dream, in which she inserted more MKR characters into Infinity World, and then Chi and I have reworked it into an extensive headcanon. Yes, there will be other fics in this 'verse. The idea is-- what if Presea and Clef were assassins in the Mafia? This fic is rated R for violence.
Excerpt: When Clef finds people he thinks he can love, he sends them away. It's the best thing to do in a profession like his.
When Clef finds people he thinks he can love, he sends them away. It's the best thing to do in a profession like his. His sister, soft smiles and constant fingers on her rosary, prays for him in a German convent. She thinks he's a businessman. Technically he is, but the business of killing doesn't usually come with a retirement plan and a gold watch for years of service. He watches as the years pass, as partners come and go, and he works for longer than he should and sends her money, every month, even though it's technically a risk. If someone found out, they could hold her against him-- another good reason to keep her far away.
She donates his money to the German poor and writes him letters that he reads, three times over, and then burns, so no one knows their contents but himself. It's one of the many things that Clef does to keep himself sane.
He cleans his guns, he practices martial arts with a stave, he sends money to his sister (with very short letters of the I'm-fine-don't-inquire variety), and he likes to read, when he isn't killing people.
He has hobbies beside his job. That's important.
*
It's a difficult balance. In his head, Clef never calls it anything but killing-- it's not removal, it's not separation, it's not just "the job," which are all terms he's heard over the years. Emeraude asks, if it's her asking and not one of her underlings, in a sweet voice, if he would "take care" of someone. Take care, like he was really hustling them off to a nice hotel for the weekend instead of putting a bullet in their head.
But he never doubts that she means it. Sometimes, and perhaps this is the worst part, he forgets that they are the Mafia and she is his employer. He was present at her birth, held her hand at her father's funeral. He has been a constant companion to her, and he knows she cares for him very much. But Emeraude never loses track of her goal, her fierce desire to control and keep the business on track.
She celebrates her seventeenth birthday in a room he's carefully swept for bombs and incendiary devices three times, after her normal bodyguards finished, because he trusts the girls but they're still amateurs in his view. He's been on edge all night because keeping her or anyone safe in a room with so many people in it is near impossible, and his dreams the night before were full of blood and the look of shock on her little-girl face before she fell heavily to the ground. He does not clutch his hand or rest his fingers on his gun-- he is much too professional for that. But he lets his eyes unfocus enough to be able to pick out unusual movement in the room, and he knows without looking that Umi is in front of Emeraude, and Hikaru is right behind, and even Fuu has her eyes on Emeraude rather than Ferio tonight.
By this point, Clef has had four different partners. He could name them all to anyone who asked-- Eclat, his teacher, who hadn't been quick enough to dodge a stray bullet; Camry, who'd pulled the trigger against her own ear (he could still hear the innocent tiny click before the rough roar of the shot and splatter, if he shut his eyes); Umi, briefly, before she became part of Emeraude's personal guard; and now Alcyone. Alcyone has lasted the longest, has put up with his moodiness and sulking and tendency to strike out at anyone who irritated him, but she doesn't know how to deal with his edginess at the moment. The best thing to do, and they both know this, is to let him have his space, so she's watching both doors from an outdoor point, and Clef is lurking in the corner of the room, watching Emeraude giggle, but mostly brooding.
He cannot lurk for long, however, before the crowds are parting with Emeraude's approach. She smiles brightly at him and says for the benefit of the crowd, "Uncle Clef, you look like you aren't enjoying yourself at all! Come dance with me!"
He blinks and consents, of course; he is the one who taught her the formal dances after all. She is seventeen but petite, and he is the only one of her men who doesn't tower over her. He is leading her through a courtly waltz, minding her feet and the people who have given them space, politely, when she speaks. Her tone is low and conversational; she might have been commenting on the cake or the other dancers, and that is likely what they think.
"Alcyone has been a little strange lately," she says. One-two-three, one-two-three. Clef twirls her, thinking, careful not to let his under-arm holster show beneath his thick jacket.
"She has a new boy," he answers her, finally. Alcyone has been oddly distant recently, but after a few years with her he's learned to recognize the signs. She slinks around as if she has something to hide, sighing when she thinks no one is listening, using smoke breaks for phone calls. She has a boyfriend. Clef does not really approve of this, given that any day Alcyone might not come back from a mission, and the other would be none the wiser as to her fate. There's that, and the simple fact that love is a distraction; it makes the mind wander. You can't afford that in their business.
"Keep an eye on her for me, please," Emeraude says, smiles, dips, hides a little bit under her golden curls. Clef nods, and he smiles back, because it is her birthday after all, and everyone here should look cheerful, at least.
Two weeks later, Alcyone disappears. Their guy on the inside of their biggest rival gang, pretending to be one of Zagato's people, tells them that Alcyone came to them, and when she was captured, demanded to talk to Zagato himself. Oddly, he consented, but even more oddly, when she left that audience, he let her go. No one quite knows why. She's on the run, their source reports, in case either of the gangs come after her.
It is an unacceptable risk. Clef finds her a week later in a nice hotel just outside Phoenix. There is sand in his shoes, sand in his everything, and as he charms the hotel clerk into give him the extra key so he can "surprise his girlfriend" (a lot more than the clerk realizes), all he can think is that he doesn't want to die in a place like this, itching underneath his skin. Thank God for Chicago. The rain and the snow were worth it.
Of course, being gone from the business for a few weeks doesn't mean that Alcyone has lost her sense of paranoia and her swift reflexes (in all likelihood, they were heightened). She knows Clef, as much as she can know someone who keeps so much to himself, but she's still not faster than him, which is why she doesn't wake until the barrel of the gun is pressed into her forehead.
Her eyes fly open; she doesn't move anything else. He'll fire if she does, both of them know that without a doubt.
"Why?" he asks.
"I love him," she answers, tears beginning to run down her cheeks. "Clef-- Clef, please, please?"
He can't. He has orders. So he fires.
He drives home with sand in his shoes, and he tells Emeraude he doesn't want a new partner.
"Not yet," she says, which isn't what he meant, not at all, but he just nods. She's his boss, after all. He works for her, not the other way around, even if she calls him Uncle Clef in public.
And for six months, that "not yet" hangs heavily in the air, and Clef works alone.
*
Six months is not long enough, but one cold November morning, Clef has his usual rendezvous with Emeraude and she tells him that his new partner will be arriving tomorrow. She's serene, even when he scowls. She doesn't have an assignment for him today so he goes to his favorite shooting range to blow off steam.
He doesn't know why Emeraude is so insistent on her enforcers having partners. Yes, it is always good to have backup, but there is a point, he thinks, when losing them becomes harder than being shot would be. He still feels a stabbing in his chest when he thinks of the look in Alcyone's eyes the moment before he pulled the trigger. He can still picture Eclat laughing, leaning over the edge of the couch and poking Clef in the nose; Camry, the way she always stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she was concentrating very hard. Umi-- she is still alive, at least, but she has always been just out of his grasp, somehow. The problem is, partners eventually come to care for each other. They make their own families, bonding over the stress and danger of their job. He sees the others do it-- Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are sisters, and anyone who injures just one of them is dealt a swift blow from the others. It's impossible to resist the impulse.
He's going to try this time. He really is. There is only one person whom he dares to love, and she's far out of his grasp. His sister is as safe as he can make her. Well, it might be safer if he stopped contacting her altogether, but he can't make himself do that. It would hurt her too badly, and he would lose his one way of remembering that there's a world outside of this one. If he loses that, what is he living for? It can't be this partner. He or she will leave, or die; or Clef will die (no chance of him leaving), and it will hurt that person. He's tired of hurting people when it isn't his job to do so (and he's very tired of hurting them for his job, but that isn't something he can get around now).
He likes practicing here, at this range. It's usually full of off-season hunters with an itch, loud and brusque and half-drunk even though they shouldn't be. No one notices him or comments about him if they do. To them, it's natural to have someone the size of a child using a gun. They take their sons hunting with them, let them take a sip of their beers and bond over killing beautiful creatures who can't fight back. That entire world is alien to Clef, and would be even if he remembered more about his childhood. The first time he picked up a pistol, he was fifteen. Eclat had been patient with his inexperience.
Clef also likes this place for its relative privacy. The hunters come in groups with friends or family, filling the middle of the range with laughter and testosterone, and he can find a private corner and just focus on his own practice. He's never seen anyone else here alone, and he's never seen a woman here, either, which might be part of the reason that the tall blonde catches his eye. She's bright and confident, in a way that would stand out anywhere. The oranges and golds she wears, the loud voice and wide grin, speak of someone with little more on their mind than their next meal or next shopping trip. And she can use a shopping trip. The shortness of her skirt is nearly criminal. He half-watches her as she fires her last round, laughing like a madwoman, and he wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen it-- the bulletholes circling the heart of the target are professional quality. Not as good as he is, of course.
She is good, however. When Emeraude introduces them later, he is almost angry enough to draw and shoot her right there (he does not want another partner), but he has to admit that. She's good, and that's what he needs-- a good backup. She's vociferous, strong-minded and vibrant in a way that he usually isn't, unless someone has pressed him to annoyance. She's a show-off with an upper-thigh holster that he's always getting accidental glimpses of. There's no chance, he thinks, of becoming attached to her, even when they are pressed together in the darkness, sharing breaths and sweat and adrenaline.
But the first time they go out her confidence breaks, and she shudders and leans over and pukes to see their target's brain spread across the walls and floor. She sobs into it, looking like a real person to him for perhaps the first time ever, and so he does for her what Eclat did for him-- ushers her into the bathroom until she feels like she can stand again, and then they leave. He doesn't realize until they're climbing into the car that he's clutching her hand, or perhaps she's clutching his; in any case, something changes. Later in the restaurant, she's laughing, sparkling like this afternoon hadn't even happened, and he smiles back.
*
He doesn't suspect Presea to last a month, no matter the strength of her smile. She doesn't throw up again after the first one, but as with any new partner there is an adjustment period, and there are several near-misses and arguments over subjects as varied as dinner (he likes sushi, she likes Italian food) to proper conduct on a job (Clef doesn't think they should sit and whisper while waiting; what if the client hears?). But she does last; she stops crying when she thinks he can hear and she gains a cool composure when on the job that matches his own.
They're sitting in their favorite diner, and Presea is gesturing with her fork and talking about something funny that Hikaru did this morning. Clef laughs, a small chuckle he hides behind his hand, and then he looks up at the calendar on the wall behind her. It's April and he realizes that they've been partners for three years now. He knows more about her than he knows about anyone besides his sister; he knows that she's a restless sleeper who always clutches her pillow, that she likes sugar in her coffee, that she was the youngest of four and she doesn't know what happened to her brothers since she quit high school and left the small town she grew up in. He knows that she's more accurate shooting someone in the head than she is in the heart, that her birthday is in July, and that when she gets upset she threatens the most ridiculous things, and never does them.
He's attached. And it's different than it is with any of the others-- he'd honestly hoped Alcyone could have avoided him and gone away; that Eclat would retire; that Camry would admit that she couldn't handle the pressure and request reassignment; that Umi would have found talents that lay elsewhere. He liked being with them, but he wanted them to be able to leave, to get out, to find themselves somewhere else.
But Presea-- he can't imagine her going away, the gigantic hole she'd leave behind, full of stupid in-jokes developed during stake-outs and the way she takes his breath away when she emerges from the hotel bathroom in a towel (though he tries not to look too much; they share a room when they travel because it's a good cover story and he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable). It's been three years but it might as well have been thirty, for how much he likes having her in his life.
He draws in a breath suddenly and she loses the thread of her story, frowning uncertainly.
"Are you all right, Clef?" she asks.
No, he thinks, but gives her a reassuring smile. "I just saw what time it is. We need to get going."
She turns her head to glance at the clock and his eyes trace the graceful curve of her neck and shoulder. "You're right," she said, turning back. She reaches into her purse and pulls out money for the meal and a tip, and then offers him a hand. It is an unselfconscious movement and he takes it without even thinking. His legs are short and sometimes he has trouble on bar stools, so she helps. She's kind like that.
Her hand is warm in his and he makes a decision. She is going to be the last partner he has. Without her, this life has no value to him. The money is nothing, the consequences for defection (Alcyone's whispered please) are nothing. She's all he has left, Presea Pharle and a little German nun who prays for his soul.
It's enough for now, he thinks, and probably more than a man in his position deserves. He follows Presea to the car and climbs into the passenger seat, buckling his belt and shutting his eyes. If Presea thinks his silence is unusual, she doesn't say anything. She's learned his moods (she knows him as well as he knows her, he suspects, and the idea is both gratifying and frightening).
They drive off into the night and Presea is humming tunelessly like she always does when they are getting ready for a job. The road is deserted and the night is moonless. It seems like the only thing in the world is the two of them and the soft rock playing very softly (she picks the station, he picks the volume) on the radio.
He hasn't realized how much of a weight he wears on his shoulders until tonight, and how surprising it is to feel it go. He hasn't really solved anything, just admitted it to himself. And yet, it feels like a step in the right direction. He drifts off to Carlos Santana and only wakes when she stops the car.
This is supposed to be a standard operation. Eagle Vision has been edging in on Emeraude's business for the past six months, and she can't afford to be fighting both him and Zagato at the same time. Fortunately, intelligence has provided them with the location of one of Eagle's safehouses, and assured that he would likely be in tonight. They're going to pay him a visit. Dispatching the guards is no more trouble than it is usually and Clef has already pegged this Eagle fellow as a low-level tyrant, at best, who deserves this bullet in his head for his incompetence.
But they've missed one gunman, and when Presea edges into the room, there's only the smallest warning of the light flickering on before someone fires, a tall scruffy man with ungroomed eyebrows. Clef takes in the detail just as he's been trained to do, but as he has very carefully been trained not to do, he pushes Presea aside in time to take her bullet in the shoulder. The wound burns more than any shot he's ever taken before, and he grimaces before managing a smile and yelling (no point in subtlety now), "Go on ahead!"
Presea, bless her, screams her anger and keeps moving without hesitation. He hears her gun bark just once and then the thump as the man who shot him hits the ground. He doesn't even groan and Clef knows that he's dead. He's having a little trouble maintaining his own consciousness and he drifts for a timeless moment before she's back, shaking his other shoulder roughly. He mewls a protest, because it still hurts.
"Alive," she breathes in relief. She picks him up and cradles him, and the pain clouds him out of thought again, but that's okay. He doesn't regret it. "Clef," she whispers shakily, "Clef, I'm sorry. Please don't die."
He can't reply; his world has diminished to a pinpoint of fiery pain, but he feels it when she begins crying, the tears splashing warmly into his clothes and onto his skin. Somehow she manages to get to her feet, and she takes both of them out of there, but he is unconscious again by the time she put him in the backseat of the car.
*
When he wakes up again, it's late afternoon and he doesn't know what day of the week it is. The setting sun is slanting through the blinds and gleaming off the pale skin of the woman sleeping upright in the chair beside his bed. He's in the hospital-- he'd recognize it by smell, even if he hadn't seen and heard the machines settled around him like vultures in wait. Presea's head has lolled onto her shoulder and her mouth is slightly open. She's still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.
"Presea," he says. It means "jewel" in Spanish, he knows, and it is in that manner that he will always think of her, with the gleam of orangey sunset on her, warm heat and steady eyes. She comes awake with a start, reaching for his hand instead of reaching for her gun. He can't move his injured arm; the muscles scream when he tries, and he wonders, still half-groggy from the painkillers he must be getting through the IV, what story she's told the hospital personnel about his wound, because all bullet wounds are supposed to be reported to the authorities. Emeraude probably took care of it; she is nearly (never) family, after all.
Presea takes his hand gently, as if she expects him to break again, and he wants to lean forward and kiss her but he can't reach and this is complicated enough without adding that in. So he just smiles at her.
"Presea," he says again, and "Clef," she answers with a half-sob, "I thought-- I thought for sure--" She bites her lip. "I don't want another partner!" she says, her tone almost desperate, and he blinks and doesn't know what to say to that. He's never before thought that her wandering around in a towel has been for his benefit, or that the way she is always brushing her hand against his is anything more than accidental. But now he's wondering, because the look in her eyes reminds him of the way he feels for her. He wants to ask, but he isn't quite sure he can find the right words, or what he will do if she says no.
"Thanks for staying," he says. And for finishing the job, and getting him out, and finding a hospital, but he knows that the hardest part of it for her is probably sticking around. She lost first one parent, and then the other, to cancer; she told him once that she can't stand hospitals and that he'd better never get hurt, because she wouldn't want to visit. But she's here, her clothes rumpled and familiar-- she hasn't gone home since she brought him in. She has to be tired, as well as uncomfortable, but it doesn't show in her answering smile.
"Of course I did," she answers, as if there has never been a question, and that is when, after a slight hesitation, she leans forward and kisses him softly on the mouth. He shuts his eyes and forgets to breathe for a moment before he dares to press back against her in answer. One of the monitors changes in tone a little, in response to his increasing heartbeat; she separates from him and settles back into the chair, pulling her shirt down a little self-consciously. She looks over at him again.
"Of course I did," she says again, and her smile covers the pain, like it always does.
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth [Mafia AU]
Length: 4055
Prompt: n/a
Pairing: Clef/Presea; various other background characters
Other: There is no excuse for this. It started with this fic by
allira_dream, in which she inserted more MKR characters into Infinity World, and then Chi and I have reworked it into an extensive headcanon. Yes, there will be other fics in this 'verse. The idea is-- what if Presea and Clef were assassins in the Mafia? This fic is rated R for violence.Excerpt: When Clef finds people he thinks he can love, he sends them away. It's the best thing to do in a profession like his.
When Clef finds people he thinks he can love, he sends them away. It's the best thing to do in a profession like his. His sister, soft smiles and constant fingers on her rosary, prays for him in a German convent. She thinks he's a businessman. Technically he is, but the business of killing doesn't usually come with a retirement plan and a gold watch for years of service. He watches as the years pass, as partners come and go, and he works for longer than he should and sends her money, every month, even though it's technically a risk. If someone found out, they could hold her against him-- another good reason to keep her far away.
She donates his money to the German poor and writes him letters that he reads, three times over, and then burns, so no one knows their contents but himself. It's one of the many things that Clef does to keep himself sane.
He cleans his guns, he practices martial arts with a stave, he sends money to his sister (with very short letters of the I'm-fine-don't-inquire variety), and he likes to read, when he isn't killing people.
He has hobbies beside his job. That's important.
*
It's a difficult balance. In his head, Clef never calls it anything but killing-- it's not removal, it's not separation, it's not just "the job," which are all terms he's heard over the years. Emeraude asks, if it's her asking and not one of her underlings, in a sweet voice, if he would "take care" of someone. Take care, like he was really hustling them off to a nice hotel for the weekend instead of putting a bullet in their head.
But he never doubts that she means it. Sometimes, and perhaps this is the worst part, he forgets that they are the Mafia and she is his employer. He was present at her birth, held her hand at her father's funeral. He has been a constant companion to her, and he knows she cares for him very much. But Emeraude never loses track of her goal, her fierce desire to control and keep the business on track.
She celebrates her seventeenth birthday in a room he's carefully swept for bombs and incendiary devices three times, after her normal bodyguards finished, because he trusts the girls but they're still amateurs in his view. He's been on edge all night because keeping her or anyone safe in a room with so many people in it is near impossible, and his dreams the night before were full of blood and the look of shock on her little-girl face before she fell heavily to the ground. He does not clutch his hand or rest his fingers on his gun-- he is much too professional for that. But he lets his eyes unfocus enough to be able to pick out unusual movement in the room, and he knows without looking that Umi is in front of Emeraude, and Hikaru is right behind, and even Fuu has her eyes on Emeraude rather than Ferio tonight.
By this point, Clef has had four different partners. He could name them all to anyone who asked-- Eclat, his teacher, who hadn't been quick enough to dodge a stray bullet; Camry, who'd pulled the trigger against her own ear (he could still hear the innocent tiny click before the rough roar of the shot and splatter, if he shut his eyes); Umi, briefly, before she became part of Emeraude's personal guard; and now Alcyone. Alcyone has lasted the longest, has put up with his moodiness and sulking and tendency to strike out at anyone who irritated him, but she doesn't know how to deal with his edginess at the moment. The best thing to do, and they both know this, is to let him have his space, so she's watching both doors from an outdoor point, and Clef is lurking in the corner of the room, watching Emeraude giggle, but mostly brooding.
He cannot lurk for long, however, before the crowds are parting with Emeraude's approach. She smiles brightly at him and says for the benefit of the crowd, "Uncle Clef, you look like you aren't enjoying yourself at all! Come dance with me!"
He blinks and consents, of course; he is the one who taught her the formal dances after all. She is seventeen but petite, and he is the only one of her men who doesn't tower over her. He is leading her through a courtly waltz, minding her feet and the people who have given them space, politely, when she speaks. Her tone is low and conversational; she might have been commenting on the cake or the other dancers, and that is likely what they think.
"Alcyone has been a little strange lately," she says. One-two-three, one-two-three. Clef twirls her, thinking, careful not to let his under-arm holster show beneath his thick jacket.
"She has a new boy," he answers her, finally. Alcyone has been oddly distant recently, but after a few years with her he's learned to recognize the signs. She slinks around as if she has something to hide, sighing when she thinks no one is listening, using smoke breaks for phone calls. She has a boyfriend. Clef does not really approve of this, given that any day Alcyone might not come back from a mission, and the other would be none the wiser as to her fate. There's that, and the simple fact that love is a distraction; it makes the mind wander. You can't afford that in their business.
"Keep an eye on her for me, please," Emeraude says, smiles, dips, hides a little bit under her golden curls. Clef nods, and he smiles back, because it is her birthday after all, and everyone here should look cheerful, at least.
Two weeks later, Alcyone disappears. Their guy on the inside of their biggest rival gang, pretending to be one of Zagato's people, tells them that Alcyone came to them, and when she was captured, demanded to talk to Zagato himself. Oddly, he consented, but even more oddly, when she left that audience, he let her go. No one quite knows why. She's on the run, their source reports, in case either of the gangs come after her.
It is an unacceptable risk. Clef finds her a week later in a nice hotel just outside Phoenix. There is sand in his shoes, sand in his everything, and as he charms the hotel clerk into give him the extra key so he can "surprise his girlfriend" (a lot more than the clerk realizes), all he can think is that he doesn't want to die in a place like this, itching underneath his skin. Thank God for Chicago. The rain and the snow were worth it.
Of course, being gone from the business for a few weeks doesn't mean that Alcyone has lost her sense of paranoia and her swift reflexes (in all likelihood, they were heightened). She knows Clef, as much as she can know someone who keeps so much to himself, but she's still not faster than him, which is why she doesn't wake until the barrel of the gun is pressed into her forehead.
Her eyes fly open; she doesn't move anything else. He'll fire if she does, both of them know that without a doubt.
"Why?" he asks.
"I love him," she answers, tears beginning to run down her cheeks. "Clef-- Clef, please, please?"
He can't. He has orders. So he fires.
He drives home with sand in his shoes, and he tells Emeraude he doesn't want a new partner.
"Not yet," she says, which isn't what he meant, not at all, but he just nods. She's his boss, after all. He works for her, not the other way around, even if she calls him Uncle Clef in public.
And for six months, that "not yet" hangs heavily in the air, and Clef works alone.
*
Six months is not long enough, but one cold November morning, Clef has his usual rendezvous with Emeraude and she tells him that his new partner will be arriving tomorrow. She's serene, even when he scowls. She doesn't have an assignment for him today so he goes to his favorite shooting range to blow off steam.
He doesn't know why Emeraude is so insistent on her enforcers having partners. Yes, it is always good to have backup, but there is a point, he thinks, when losing them becomes harder than being shot would be. He still feels a stabbing in his chest when he thinks of the look in Alcyone's eyes the moment before he pulled the trigger. He can still picture Eclat laughing, leaning over the edge of the couch and poking Clef in the nose; Camry, the way she always stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she was concentrating very hard. Umi-- she is still alive, at least, but she has always been just out of his grasp, somehow. The problem is, partners eventually come to care for each other. They make their own families, bonding over the stress and danger of their job. He sees the others do it-- Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are sisters, and anyone who injures just one of them is dealt a swift blow from the others. It's impossible to resist the impulse.
He's going to try this time. He really is. There is only one person whom he dares to love, and she's far out of his grasp. His sister is as safe as he can make her. Well, it might be safer if he stopped contacting her altogether, but he can't make himself do that. It would hurt her too badly, and he would lose his one way of remembering that there's a world outside of this one. If he loses that, what is he living for? It can't be this partner. He or she will leave, or die; or Clef will die (no chance of him leaving), and it will hurt that person. He's tired of hurting people when it isn't his job to do so (and he's very tired of hurting them for his job, but that isn't something he can get around now).
He likes practicing here, at this range. It's usually full of off-season hunters with an itch, loud and brusque and half-drunk even though they shouldn't be. No one notices him or comments about him if they do. To them, it's natural to have someone the size of a child using a gun. They take their sons hunting with them, let them take a sip of their beers and bond over killing beautiful creatures who can't fight back. That entire world is alien to Clef, and would be even if he remembered more about his childhood. The first time he picked up a pistol, he was fifteen. Eclat had been patient with his inexperience.
Clef also likes this place for its relative privacy. The hunters come in groups with friends or family, filling the middle of the range with laughter and testosterone, and he can find a private corner and just focus on his own practice. He's never seen anyone else here alone, and he's never seen a woman here, either, which might be part of the reason that the tall blonde catches his eye. She's bright and confident, in a way that would stand out anywhere. The oranges and golds she wears, the loud voice and wide grin, speak of someone with little more on their mind than their next meal or next shopping trip. And she can use a shopping trip. The shortness of her skirt is nearly criminal. He half-watches her as she fires her last round, laughing like a madwoman, and he wouldn't believe it if he hadn't seen it-- the bulletholes circling the heart of the target are professional quality. Not as good as he is, of course.
She is good, however. When Emeraude introduces them later, he is almost angry enough to draw and shoot her right there (he does not want another partner), but he has to admit that. She's good, and that's what he needs-- a good backup. She's vociferous, strong-minded and vibrant in a way that he usually isn't, unless someone has pressed him to annoyance. She's a show-off with an upper-thigh holster that he's always getting accidental glimpses of. There's no chance, he thinks, of becoming attached to her, even when they are pressed together in the darkness, sharing breaths and sweat and adrenaline.
But the first time they go out her confidence breaks, and she shudders and leans over and pukes to see their target's brain spread across the walls and floor. She sobs into it, looking like a real person to him for perhaps the first time ever, and so he does for her what Eclat did for him-- ushers her into the bathroom until she feels like she can stand again, and then they leave. He doesn't realize until they're climbing into the car that he's clutching her hand, or perhaps she's clutching his; in any case, something changes. Later in the restaurant, she's laughing, sparkling like this afternoon hadn't even happened, and he smiles back.
*
He doesn't suspect Presea to last a month, no matter the strength of her smile. She doesn't throw up again after the first one, but as with any new partner there is an adjustment period, and there are several near-misses and arguments over subjects as varied as dinner (he likes sushi, she likes Italian food) to proper conduct on a job (Clef doesn't think they should sit and whisper while waiting; what if the client hears?). But she does last; she stops crying when she thinks he can hear and she gains a cool composure when on the job that matches his own.
They're sitting in their favorite diner, and Presea is gesturing with her fork and talking about something funny that Hikaru did this morning. Clef laughs, a small chuckle he hides behind his hand, and then he looks up at the calendar on the wall behind her. It's April and he realizes that they've been partners for three years now. He knows more about her than he knows about anyone besides his sister; he knows that she's a restless sleeper who always clutches her pillow, that she likes sugar in her coffee, that she was the youngest of four and she doesn't know what happened to her brothers since she quit high school and left the small town she grew up in. He knows that she's more accurate shooting someone in the head than she is in the heart, that her birthday is in July, and that when she gets upset she threatens the most ridiculous things, and never does them.
He's attached. And it's different than it is with any of the others-- he'd honestly hoped Alcyone could have avoided him and gone away; that Eclat would retire; that Camry would admit that she couldn't handle the pressure and request reassignment; that Umi would have found talents that lay elsewhere. He liked being with them, but he wanted them to be able to leave, to get out, to find themselves somewhere else.
But Presea-- he can't imagine her going away, the gigantic hole she'd leave behind, full of stupid in-jokes developed during stake-outs and the way she takes his breath away when she emerges from the hotel bathroom in a towel (though he tries not to look too much; they share a room when they travel because it's a good cover story and he doesn't want to make her uncomfortable). It's been three years but it might as well have been thirty, for how much he likes having her in his life.
He draws in a breath suddenly and she loses the thread of her story, frowning uncertainly.
"Are you all right, Clef?" she asks.
No, he thinks, but gives her a reassuring smile. "I just saw what time it is. We need to get going."
She turns her head to glance at the clock and his eyes trace the graceful curve of her neck and shoulder. "You're right," she said, turning back. She reaches into her purse and pulls out money for the meal and a tip, and then offers him a hand. It is an unselfconscious movement and he takes it without even thinking. His legs are short and sometimes he has trouble on bar stools, so she helps. She's kind like that.
Her hand is warm in his and he makes a decision. She is going to be the last partner he has. Without her, this life has no value to him. The money is nothing, the consequences for defection (Alcyone's whispered please) are nothing. She's all he has left, Presea Pharle and a little German nun who prays for his soul.
It's enough for now, he thinks, and probably more than a man in his position deserves. He follows Presea to the car and climbs into the passenger seat, buckling his belt and shutting his eyes. If Presea thinks his silence is unusual, she doesn't say anything. She's learned his moods (she knows him as well as he knows her, he suspects, and the idea is both gratifying and frightening).
They drive off into the night and Presea is humming tunelessly like she always does when they are getting ready for a job. The road is deserted and the night is moonless. It seems like the only thing in the world is the two of them and the soft rock playing very softly (she picks the station, he picks the volume) on the radio.
He hasn't realized how much of a weight he wears on his shoulders until tonight, and how surprising it is to feel it go. He hasn't really solved anything, just admitted it to himself. And yet, it feels like a step in the right direction. He drifts off to Carlos Santana and only wakes when she stops the car.
This is supposed to be a standard operation. Eagle Vision has been edging in on Emeraude's business for the past six months, and she can't afford to be fighting both him and Zagato at the same time. Fortunately, intelligence has provided them with the location of one of Eagle's safehouses, and assured that he would likely be in tonight. They're going to pay him a visit. Dispatching the guards is no more trouble than it is usually and Clef has already pegged this Eagle fellow as a low-level tyrant, at best, who deserves this bullet in his head for his incompetence.
But they've missed one gunman, and when Presea edges into the room, there's only the smallest warning of the light flickering on before someone fires, a tall scruffy man with ungroomed eyebrows. Clef takes in the detail just as he's been trained to do, but as he has very carefully been trained not to do, he pushes Presea aside in time to take her bullet in the shoulder. The wound burns more than any shot he's ever taken before, and he grimaces before managing a smile and yelling (no point in subtlety now), "Go on ahead!"
Presea, bless her, screams her anger and keeps moving without hesitation. He hears her gun bark just once and then the thump as the man who shot him hits the ground. He doesn't even groan and Clef knows that he's dead. He's having a little trouble maintaining his own consciousness and he drifts for a timeless moment before she's back, shaking his other shoulder roughly. He mewls a protest, because it still hurts.
"Alive," she breathes in relief. She picks him up and cradles him, and the pain clouds him out of thought again, but that's okay. He doesn't regret it. "Clef," she whispers shakily, "Clef, I'm sorry. Please don't die."
He can't reply; his world has diminished to a pinpoint of fiery pain, but he feels it when she begins crying, the tears splashing warmly into his clothes and onto his skin. Somehow she manages to get to her feet, and she takes both of them out of there, but he is unconscious again by the time she put him in the backseat of the car.
*
When he wakes up again, it's late afternoon and he doesn't know what day of the week it is. The setting sun is slanting through the blinds and gleaming off the pale skin of the woman sleeping upright in the chair beside his bed. He's in the hospital-- he'd recognize it by smell, even if he hadn't seen and heard the machines settled around him like vultures in wait. Presea's head has lolled onto her shoulder and her mouth is slightly open. She's still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.
"Presea," he says. It means "jewel" in Spanish, he knows, and it is in that manner that he will always think of her, with the gleam of orangey sunset on her, warm heat and steady eyes. She comes awake with a start, reaching for his hand instead of reaching for her gun. He can't move his injured arm; the muscles scream when he tries, and he wonders, still half-groggy from the painkillers he must be getting through the IV, what story she's told the hospital personnel about his wound, because all bullet wounds are supposed to be reported to the authorities. Emeraude probably took care of it; she is nearly (never) family, after all.
Presea takes his hand gently, as if she expects him to break again, and he wants to lean forward and kiss her but he can't reach and this is complicated enough without adding that in. So he just smiles at her.
"Presea," he says again, and "Clef," she answers with a half-sob, "I thought-- I thought for sure--" She bites her lip. "I don't want another partner!" she says, her tone almost desperate, and he blinks and doesn't know what to say to that. He's never before thought that her wandering around in a towel has been for his benefit, or that the way she is always brushing her hand against his is anything more than accidental. But now he's wondering, because the look in her eyes reminds him of the way he feels for her. He wants to ask, but he isn't quite sure he can find the right words, or what he will do if she says no.
"Thanks for staying," he says. And for finishing the job, and getting him out, and finding a hospital, but he knows that the hardest part of it for her is probably sticking around. She lost first one parent, and then the other, to cancer; she told him once that she can't stand hospitals and that he'd better never get hurt, because she wouldn't want to visit. But she's here, her clothes rumpled and familiar-- she hasn't gone home since she brought him in. She has to be tired, as well as uncomfortable, but it doesn't show in her answering smile.
"Of course I did," she answers, as if there has never been a question, and that is when, after a slight hesitation, she leans forward and kisses him softly on the mouth. He shuts his eyes and forgets to breathe for a moment before he dares to press back against her in answer. One of the monitors changes in tone a little, in response to his increasing heartbeat; she separates from him and settles back into the chair, pulling her shirt down a little self-consciously. She looks over at him again.
"Of course I did," she says again, and her smile covers the pain, like it always does.