Dark Arrow Ch. 05

"Why not," she asked glaring at him. "If they're as determined as you say they are to get us why wouldn't they just blow up a section of the town and blame it on us? And why do they care? I know I'm an assassin but there are tons of assassins out there. What makes me so special?"

"I do," he whispered sheathing his knife.

"What the fucking hell is that supposed to mean Ren," she shouted as she closed in on him, but when his eyes met hers though, she froze in place unable to look away from that haunted expression.

"I've been MIA for just over seven years Erillia. In all that time I've never allowed myself to care about anyone. I've never formed friendships or allowed people to get close to me. I most certainly have never risked myself for anyone. Then along you come. Everything about the situation says I knock you out cold and leave you in the alley, but I can't."

He shook his head and paced as he continued. "No instead I go and kill a group waiting to ambush us and leave a signature that will send out a red flag to the people who want me dead. I've basically flashed a giant neon 'come and get me' at them. They're going to connect your kill with me, there's no way in hell they'll miss it. They're going to figure out I've got feelings for you and then they're going to come after you with everything they've got."

"Why?" The question was soft... so soft he almost didn't hear her ask it. He sighed and faced her. He'd known that he'd have to answer that question at some point, but he'd been hoping he had a little more time. Sighing he turned and faced her again. There was really only one way to say this, but he had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to end well.

"Because they know I care about you and they want something I have. They'll try and use you to make me do what they want." He shook his head and sighed. "The thing is it will work too. I stole information from them that could destabilize the Advocacy, and I've been hiding ever since. They haven't dared to come after me in force because if they come on too strong I could always release that data, and they've never had any leverage to counter it. Now they do."

"Bullshit," she sputtered, staring at him incredulously. "If you had that intel why wouldn't you release it? More to the point, if it's that big than it's bigger than either of us, so what difference does it make if they capture me or you or anyone, the damage will be done!" He looked at her for a second and then shook his head slowly with a sad look on his face.

"It's not that simple Erillia. If I had released this information before now first of all it would have done two things. First and foremost it would have caused an uproar here on Terra, but as soon as it started transmitting through to earth and the other settlements it would have had to go through the Empire's relays. Those relays are run and monitored by the Advocacy. The transmission would have been stuck here because they would immediately have stopped all communication into and out of the system."

"They can't just shut down communication," she snapped. "If they did people would want to know exactly what had happened. It would just lend credibility to the information, and it would eventually leak through on ships as they jumped out to the other systems." He gave a rueful chuckle.

"You don't get how far reaching their tenticals are, do you?" He heaved a sigh and motioned for her to follow him as he walked towards the lake. "The standard protocol if a system goes com silent is to send in a military task force immediately to investigate. That's a safety measure they put in place because they were afraid some colony might get attacked by some yet undiscovered aliens or some group of pirates and that they would be able to hold the system for ransom. If not for this fail safe, or so the theory goes, some of the farther flung systems could be out of contact for months before anyone noticed."

He glanced over his shoulder at the meadow, lit by the setting sun that cast it in a golden hue. They probably only had two or three hours before the sun went down. In an untouched place like this though that would probably be more than enough time to catch a few fish or at least that was what he hoped. She seemed to get his intent as she slung the poles off her back and handed one to him as they approached the edge of the lake.

"The problem with the system is that they can shut the coms off themselves and there's no oversight to prevent them doing that. Essentially if they think there's a problem they can generate a situation that gives them the mandate to send an invasion level task force to any system in the empire. If the intel was leaked here they would send in the military and anyone who didn't keep their mouth shut and toe the party line would be killed."

"They couldn't do that, there's too many people! Sooner or later the story would get out," she said agast as they checked the lines and baited their hooks. He took the piece of entrails she offered him and carefully fed the hook through it.

"They can and they have," he finally answered after the silence had stretched out between them. "You know that tiny little mining colony out on Aester Nova?" he glanced at her and saw her nod an affirmative. "About nine... maybe ten years ago there was a rebellion out there, do you remember that?" She shook her head no, and he grunted. "Good, then I did my job right. I'll bet you remember the tragic explosion that killed four miners though don't you."

"Of course. It was major news; they even took up a collection for the families." It took a second but suddenly she spun and stared at him. "What do you mean you did your job right!" He winced as she all but shrieked, but he met her eyes steadily.

"I'm a highly trained special operation Marine employed by the Advocacy, what did you think I used to do Erillia?" She continued to stare at him in shock, so he sighed. "I was an assassin Erillia, that was what I did since I joined the corp. I was given a mission to take out someone that was a threat to the Empire, or so I was told. I did my job the way I was trained to do."

He chuckled. "Did no one stop to wonder how that explosion killed them and yet the structural supports didn't collapse?" She shook her head and cleared her throat.

"They never said anything other than a large explosion took out a tunnel and killed the miners," she said quietly. He stared at her for a second and then broke out laughing.

"Oh that's rich. I never bothered to check the official reports, but I never would have imagined they could pull that one off. Honey, I blew out the sections of support pylon their rooms were in. It took multiple shape charges to take out those two sections without compromising the integrity of the supports. I could have just collapsed the station completely, but I was never one for collateral damage. Unfortunately for us I was about the only operative that felt that way."

"Why," she murmured softly after a few minutes of silence. He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

"Why what exactly?"

"Why were you the only one who felt that way?" she said turning to hold his gaze. He blinked in surprise and pursed his lips in thought. She waited for his reply but suddenly there was a tug on her line. She turned her attention to the pole and focused on landing the fish. A fish not unlike the pike from earth these predatory fish didn't like to be brought into land, but the line was strong and she was experienced in this process. A light flick of her wrist and she had the fish on the shore where she pinned it down and delivered a swift blow with the butt of her knife poleaxing the fish.

She took the cordage she'd used to carry the poles together and ran one end through one of the gills to form a stringer. She took a second to rebait her hook and cast it again before she settled back down on the bank. No sooner had she settled down than Ren gave a twitch to his pole and rose to his feet. She was prepared to step in and help him land it, but he gave a deft flick and flopped the fish out onto the bank just as she had. Pinning it with his foot he also delivered a stunning blow to the fish before passing it to her to place on the stringer.

"I don't know," he said as he sat back down, causing her to stare at him for a second as she caught back up. "If I had to hazard a guess I would say that it takes a unique personality to do the type of work I did. I did it in a way that I felt was best, but it was almost always the hardest way to get the job done. Most people in my unit were afraid of dying during a mission, so they took the easiest path. Besides it's easy to convince yourself that what you're doing is ok when you've got a government mandate and are told your missions are what keep the empire safe. "

"So what made you stop," she asked tilting her head as she looked at him. "You don't talk like you regret what you did, and yet you're on the run from the very people you worked for. Clearly something changed, so what was it that made you decide to leave and why doesn't that color the way you feel about your other missions?" Ren sighed and thought for a minute.

"I get what you're saying Erillia I really do, but you have to try and see this from my perspective. Do you regret any of the contracts you've taken, even though you know you were manipulated on at least one of them?" She thought for a second but then shook her head. He smiled, and nodded. "Of course not, because you were just doing the job you were hired to do. Most of your targets deserved to die I have no doubt of that, but along with that there were likely a few that really didn't deserve to have you hunting them."

He cleared his throat and looked out at the lake for a second. "I did my job, and I did it well," he continued finally. "I acted on the best intel available to me at the time. I know now how corruptible the system is and how skewed the data can be, but I never killed anyone I didn't believe deserved it. I'm sure that if I dug back through my missions and could access the actual facts there would be dozens of missions I should not have taken, but I did my best with the information I was provided."

He gave her a chilling look. "I've done some terrible things," he said softly. "I've been trained to torture, kill, even maim if the mission calls for it. I've been trained to calculate acceptable casualties like they're numbers and not people I'm adding up. I know thousands of ways to kill someone and can categorize them by how messy they are, how much pain they will cause, and how much public outcry they will create. I am not a nice man Erillia, but you know that."

She opened her mouth to deny that, but he cut her off. "You know I'm in the same line of work as you. You know what this kind of life is like. I'm not a saint, and lord knows there is an ocean of blood on my hands. At the end of the day though I do my best to take as few lives as needed and to do so in the least painful way I can. I did what I did because I thought I was protecting something worth saving."

She wanted to argue... but in the end he was right, she was far from a saint herself. She'd killed for money and not for any sense of right or greater good. She deemed the men she killed needed to die based on the information provided by those employing her. Still if this last mission had taught her anything it was that not every contract was what it appeared to be. Ren might have done things she would consider beyond what she was willing to do but he had always shown himself a man of honor while he was with her.

Another strike on her line interrupted her thoughts as she concentrated on landing the fish. Ren surged to his feet just as she got the fish on land and soon he had another as well. Stringing the four fish together she turned and started back towards the cave.

"You're right Ren I have no right to judge you, and I don't. I'm just surprised that you are so convinced of how evil this group is now, and yet it doesn't affect how you feel about what you did for them." He didn't answer at first, and with her back to him she didn't see the grimace that passed over his face. She might not be judging him, but right now he was judging himself.

The sun had been gone from the sky for a good half hour to an hour and the going was more treacherous now so it took them almost twice as long to reach the cave. Erillia belted the stringer around her waist and tucked the rod into it like a sword before she grabbed the rope and herself up to the ledge. She quickly set to work boning and skinning the fish they had caught and then started the stove. Taking down a flat stone she laid the pieces on it, sprinkled some seasoning she pulled from her bag over them, and placed them in the oven.

Scoping up the various pieces of discarded fish she added what she could to the jar of bait and discarded the rest. Then she sat about laying her sleeping roll out for the night and tidying up as Ren sat near on the ledge and stared out over the meadow. She wanted to approach him, but something held her back. She wasn't quite sure how she knew, but she had a feeling he needed his space at the moment.

Instead she spent the time observing him. Their relationship had been... tumultuous to say the least, and yet she had to admit it was the happiest she'd been since her father passed away. The fact that she trusted him on an almost instinctual level bothered her, as did the fact that for the first time in her life she actually wanted to give up control. Still, if he wanted to hurt her there had been plenty of opportunity. It seemed unlikely that he would go through all this risk to build up a persona, particularly since she had nothing to offer him in the way of benefit.

Maybe if she'd been some debutant with access to the untold wealth of the upper class families and barons it would make sense for him to string out a con job like this. She wasn't wealthy though, in fact she had nothing to offer except her skills as a hunter and an assassin. If that was what he'd been after he had all the leverage he'd ever need just by saving her. He could have demanded she work for him or he'd turn her in.

That would have been much simpler and would have kept him much safer. The other possibility was that he was some deranged psycho and would kill her some night in her sleep and bury her out here in the woods. However if that was the case she figured he'd have struck by now. After all, she'd passed out their first time together and had fallen asleep in his arms the next night only to wake up safe and sound. On top of which those weren't the type of people who would have the combat skills needed to handle themselves the way Ren did. No the only thing that made sense was that he was who he said he was, and for some reason that person called to her so strongly that all her guards came crashing down around him.

She shook off her musings and ignored the vibe rolling off of him as she walked up and sat next to him. He turned a glare towards her, but she only smiled.

"I'm sorry Ren. It was wrong of me to question you about your past like that. I was just trying to understand you better. I know there are things you're not telling me... don't think I can't tell. You drop bombshells on me like knowing who my father was and claiming he was a Marine and then telling me about being responsible for that explosion... I should be running scared. I should consider you a threat and competition. Hell there's a thousand things I should do, but the only thing I want to do is get closer to you."

He jerked his head around and stared at her as she fumed. "Do you have any idea how frustrating that is," she growled. "I've never let my guard down around anyone. I've never trusted anyone, no matter how nice and trustworthy they were. Then here you come. You're clearly dangerous, you can take me on in a fight, you interfered in a contract, you drugged me and hauled me out of the city with the cops on our heels... but none of that matters because when I'm around you my walls just crumble. I feel like I don't have a choice but to trust you, and that's so against who I am that it's extremely unsettling."

There was silence for a while as she stopped speaking. Neither one of them knew exactly what to say, and comfortable enough with each other not to rush to fill the silence. Finally Ren reached out and wrapped his arm around her and hugged her to him.

"I do think about it Erillia," he murmured. "If I let myself dwell on it though it just locks me up. I could spend the rest of my life in recriminations, but it wouldn't do any good. I can't change the past, but I can let it change how I act in the future. That's why I started protecting people, trying to save lives rather than take them. Only problem is not every target is worth saving and not every assassin deserves to die."

"This isn't a black and white world Ren," she murmured, leaning against him. "There are always various ways of looking at things and various reasons for each action. Black and white are good for basic principles like saying that killing is wrong, but we both know that when you try and apply that to people it gets clouded really quickly. Killing may be wrong but what if someone needs to die to protect someone else? It's in the grey areas where our convictions and our morals are tested."

"Most can't handle living in the grey," Ren whispered as he kissed her head. "It takes a special kind of strength to do things others consider morally wrong because you see the tradeoff. Take one life, but save fifty others. On paper the decision is easy, but it's never easy when you're the one taking that life. We're the darkest of black, and yet we both sought to make the world a better place. That's one of the whitest of goals. It's a duality that most can't handle, and I'll admit that even I have times when I doubt myself."

"You were guided by forces that didn't have the public's best interest at heart Ren," she said, softly stroking his leg with her hand. "You did what you did with the best of intentions. I questioned you because I wanted to understand you better, not because I questioned who you were as a person. As you said what's in the past is in the past, for now we need to deal with the present. The future will have to take care of itself, because I'm taking life one day at a time from now on."

He smiled and stood, pulling her up into his arms and giving her a kiss. The smell of fish called them back into the cave, where she turned off the stove and using tongs retrieved the stone from the oven. As it cooled she walked back out to the ledge and gazed over their little patch of wilderness. The animals were making their usual nighttime sounds, so it didn't appear that they had disturbed them too much with their sparing or other activities.

The humidity and temperature felt normal, and if she had to hazard a guess she'd wager that tomorrow was going to be a beautiful day for hunting. They needed to eat though and get to bed since it was going to be an early start to the day. Turning back she saw Ren standing there staring at her with a gleam in his eye that made her shiver. She felt far too worn out to do anything about it, but it was still nice to be admired like that.

They ate in silence as he eyed her between bites, and she had to force down a smile. When they finished he helped her clean up as best they could and then they stripped and straightened their bed rolls out. When they lay down he pulled her into his arms, much to her surprise.

"I know neither one of us has the strength or the energy to do anything tonight, but I still want to hold you little one," he growled into her hair as he planted a kiss on her forehead. She sighed contentedly and snuggled down with him to drift off to sleep. This feeling of contentment and happiness still bothered her, but it didn't seem likely that it would be going away any time soon. She just prayed it didn't end up slowing her reflexes when she needed them most. There could be no greater irony than being killed simply because you finally cared that you were alive.