Chapter Text
“Don’t like crowds?”
Zelda toyed with a strand of her hair and waited for a few seconds before answering. She could tell he liked them shy. She gave him a small smile.
“I’m tired of it, you know? This is the third one this week.”
“Fourth”, the guy said, pointing at himself.
“Aren’t you popular.”
At that moment, she couldn’t tell if she really wanted him to like her, or if it was just being bored out of her mind, what made her bleed the sarcasm out of her voice and widen her smile for him. It was getting to her, enough to get a little distracted.
“Well, it runs in the family.”
He said it a bit self-deprecatingly, with an asymmetrical smile, which made Zelda respect him more. Most guests at these events were heirs and heiresses anyway. Just like her. Neither of them would be smoking on the rooftop of that building, hiding out for a few minutes, if it weren’t for their respective fathers.
Zelda accepted a second cigarette from the stranger. She was feeling rebellious. She wondered how much longer she had before the bodyguard found her. He was green, still. She could get away with sneaking off two or three more times like this in the following days, maybe even four, and after that, she guessed, she would have to start getting inventive. He wasn’t the first one, or the last one.
The man offered the lighter up, and she let him cup a hand inches from her cheek to light her cigarette for her. It was the part she loved: She felt the harmless warmth of the flame near her face and the whisper of his fingers brushing her neck while falling back down, as if by chance. She held his gaze through her eyelashes and exhaled smoke in his face, playful. His nostrils flared and he gave her a mock chastising look. Exaggerated, almost a pout. She laughed. Zelda had decided she liked him enough to ask for his name.
“What should I call you?”
“Jack?”
Was it a question?
“Jack…?”
“You want to know how much of the city my family owns?” It could have been rude the way he was avoiding the question, but she was in the mood for cynicism. She shrugged.
He ran his fingers through his hair, as if pondering something, and the gesture made his sleeve ride up a few centimeters. There, in the place she’d least expected it, she saw it. Snaking around his wrist, archaic lines that made an eye. She glanced away and hoped he hadn’t seen her looking. Or would it be even more suspicious to not ask about it?
“What if we forget about all of that, just for tonight?”
He seemed so sincere. Would she have fallen for it, under other circumstances? Was it really that easy?
“Fine”, she sighed. It was very easy to pretend like she wanted to run away from herself. Fall right into his arms, be anyone else. His eyes were so dark, it made her breath catch. He was good. “Where should we go, then?”
“You want to leave?”
His surprise seemed genuine. He was very good. It was a good thing she was getting herself kidnapped on purpose; they could split the credit.
“I didn’t mean to be forward. Just, hard to forget from up here. We’re surrounded.” She lowered her voice, conspirationally. He was charmed, too. Would he be apologetic when the situation escalated, or was he hiding a whole other face?
“I know a place.”
So they laced fingers and followed each other down the stairs. He was tipsy. Maybe an act, maybe not, but he stumbled on the last few steps and it gave Zelda a chance to send a text she’d typed beforehand. She put the phone back in her handbag and left it forgotten on a table by the front door. If the new guy was smart enough to figure it out, she would be fine. She had left it all tied up and spelled out. If he wasn’t, though, at least he would get fired. Win-win.
She had expected the slick black car. The hand on her knee. Then, the zip ties and the hood over her head. She didn’t fight, and she didn’t have to fake the trembling in her breathing. It was quite dark all of a sudden, she was losing feeling in the tips of her fingers, and she could still see in her mind a handsome dimple on his left cheek. It was hard to reconcile the image with the kind of man who would join some kind of terrorist organisation. What she hadn’t expected was the fear, pressing down on her chest and making her mind race. She couldn’t help picturing how stupid it would all look if she got herself killed.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered to Jack despite her pride, despite him not really being called Jack. She heard him shift in the leather seat. Maybe hesitating, maybe getting more comfortable. She was glad that he did’t reach out to touch her this time.
“Oh, just shut up.” Now, he sounded sincere, and she could finally tell the difference in his voice. She pressed her mouth closed and focused on breathing.
It was a short ride before they slowed down and she was led out of the car. She dragged her feet, careful not to break an ankle on her high heels, until a hand between her shoulder-blades shoved her forward.
“Don’t take all day.”
This was another man. Maybe the driver. She hadn’t considered the driver could be someone, not just a faceless worker. She couldn't catch her balance with her hands behind her back, but something solid steadied her. This had to be Jack, but she couldn’t be sure, because he stayed silent. Zelda let herself be pushed and pulled, until she was sat down inside.
It smelled strongly of alcohol and smoke, and more faintly of vomit. Zelda wanted badly to check if her dress had anything on it. Panic was jumbling up her priorities. A bottle against wood. Glass against glass. There were many people around her now, both men and women. She wondered, weren’t they worried about getting involved in a kidnapping? And not just any kidnapping, but hers. If they weren't worried, what did that mean for her? This seemed bigger than she’d thought. The Beatles was playing beneath all the noise, which seemed stupid. It was an early song, one of those everyone knew by name, but she couldn't seem to bring it back into her head. She needed to focus on something other than the blood in her ears.
“That doesn’t mean we need to kill her right now,” she made out. It was a deep voice, a woman’s.
“It’s the plan. We’ve been over this,” a man said. It could be the one that shoved her, or a different one.
“I just think we can get more money out of it if we do it properly.”
“That’s your problem, isn’t it. It’s always about money.”
That got a rise out of the woman and she raised her voice:
“Easy for you to say.”
Against her better judgement, Zelda spoke up. She asked,
“What else would it be about?”
At least a couple of them laughed at her.
“If you’re going to kill me, you might as well tell me,” she insisted, less sure. No one spoke, until the woman said, like it was an argument repeated a hundred times over:
“It’s not supposed to be today.”
That was helpful, Zelda thought. And then she heard the wasp sting shots of a silenced gun. Oh, no. That was it.
“Jack?”
Nobody answered. Some people were screaming. She let herself slip from the chair to the floor clumsily. By her side, something hit the floor with a hollow sound. She put her head between her legs and waited. There was some grunting, rapid footsteps everywhere, and more screams. This time, screams of pain, not just fear. Bodies fell onto tables, onto other bodies. Someone gargled up blood. At least, she imagined it was blood. Then, a warm hand on her shoulder.
“Zelda?” It was him, or so she thought. The bodyguard, his voice was quiet. “Are you hurt?”
Was she? She was breathless, hyperventilating on the fabric over her face. She shook her head and let herself be helped up. How was he here? There had been at least ten people in the room, if not more. Now, there was an eerie silence. He touched her arm again, presumably to lead her outside.
“Wait. Take these off.” He stopped. It was clear disobeying her made him uncomfortable. Still, he told her, “Not here.” She wanted to protest, but something in his voice made her let it rest. They turned a corner and stopped again. He freed her hands first, and let her lift the hood herself. She felt numb all over. She let the hood fall to the floor, but he picked it up. He had a ragged cut on his face that made it very easy to imagine someone sweeping at him with a broken bottle. She winced in sympathy pain, and he ignored her.
“Try not to leave anything behind. We weren’t here.”
“Where aren’t we?” They were walking out of the building, which looked like just any bar downtown. She craned her head to look at the street name, trying not to think about the unnatural quiet of the night around them. He didn’t answer, just waited for her to get in the car. Another shiny black car to take her back home. After just a few minutes, his silence began to unnerve her.
“That easy, to cover up a massacre, huh?”
The bodyguard stared right ahead into the night and kept driving, his pressed lips the only sign that he had heard her speak.
“Oh. That is yours.” He gestured with his head to the backseat. Her purse.
She took her phone out and saved the location of the shoot-out. Then she enabled the fingerprint lock on it. Thank god she’d thought of disabling it for him. It took him long enough as it was.
“Where were you?” She was still scared, which made her be even more frustrated with him.
“You planned this,” he said, stating the obvious. With how little he spoke, she didn’t take him for that kind of person. When she didn’t reply, he gave her a look, and asked, “Why?”
“It’s not about you.” What did he think, that she was testing him?
“Obviously.”
“Then what do you care?”
He kept calm despite her rudeness. His knuckles, bloody, were relaxed on the steering wheel.
“Would make my job easier,” he said without heat. Like it didn’t really matter if it was easy or difficult, because he would do it one way or the other.
“Do you think my father likes a snitch?” Now she was bluffing, because her father loved a snitch, as long as he was snitching to him. “Find a better way to climb the ladder,” she advised, condescending.
“Whatever.” If he had sounded cross, she would have felt better about it. The unaffected tone of his voice just let her know she was wrong, even though she knew she wasn’t. Whatever, her mind echoed. She stared out the window, trying to tidy her thoughts while she traced her fingers along her wrist, where the cable ties had bitten into her skin.
Was it worth it? What had she learned, really? That the Yiga weren’t just following her to scam her dad out of a few hundred thousand. That they had infighting issues and sounded like fanatics. There were more of them than she expected, but that was before her new bodyguard wiped out a full room of them by himself.
Should she be frightened by him? She positioned herself so she could see him without facing him directly. Now that he’d taken his sunglasses off, she could see that his eyes were blue. He watched the rear view mirror and his right hand fell down to shift gears. They picked up speed seamlessly. Then, the streets were familiar enough for her to notice him making a wrong turn. He looked back again. She tried to see what he was seeing without outright turning in her seat.
“Where are we going?” she asked offhandedly.
“We’re being followed.”
“Huh.”
This late at night, there was no traffic to lose them in. The bodyguard built up to 70 km/h and then swerved off the avenue they were on to snake through a series of smaller streets. There was a deep thud, followed by a rattle that shook the entire car. Because now she was outright watching him, Zelda could see a whisper of a frown on the bodyguard’s face.
“Are the windows bulletproof?” she asked with imposed calm. He nodded, but something in his expression told her this was no guarantee. The streets they were speeding through were narrow, full of parked cars. They passed by the window one after the other, like they could never run out, in a blinking flicker of streetlights. They led into a roundabout and crossed it straight through. Zelda clamped her mouth shut and gripped the handle.
The bodyguard kept checking behind them, so she did too. She spied into the left-side mirror and saw no one, just as his arm reached out across her body to press her against the seat as he stepped harshly on the breaks. Both of their heads rocked forwards, backwards. He changed into reverse and the engine roared as the car shot the way they had come. Somehow, the other car had made it in front of them to cut their way off.
Someone stumbled out of the car, a man holding a gun. Zelda recognised him through the blood running down the side of his face and into his right eye, as the man she had been flirting with on the rooftop. His eyes were glazed from bloodloss, from determination. She let out a breath, knowing what was coming but unable to do anything about it. A bullet lodged itself in the glass between her two eyes.
Zelda saw the bodyguard's fingers twitch over the gears, hesitating. He was thinking about shifting into first and ramming into him. She breathed a horrified “no”. Another bullet, right over her cheek. They exchanged a look, her breathing heavy; him, tense. He punched the gas pedal and they shot backwards out of the street. The tires screeched when he turned and he shifted out of reverse. The man kept firing at them, one of the back windows exploded open. Then, they sped back into the night, leaving him behind.
The bodyguard took a long way back to the apartment, through the ring road and then a spiderweb of alleyways, to be sure they didn’t still have someone on them. Neither of them spoke when they got out of the car and into the building, until Zelda let them inside the door and they stood together in the dark. The blood in his white shirt looked black
“You're still bleeding,” she noted. He nodded. She felt like she had to say thank you, or I’m sorry. In silence, she went to the bathroom and took out the med kit. When she came back to the kitchen, he had switched on the lights and taken off his tie. He was bent over the sink, washing the cut on his face with dish soap. His fingers were light, but still, Zelda winced. She handed him gauze to dry it off and some more to press into it. Then, she took out a numbing spray and a sewing kit and slid them his way.
He lifted his eyebrows. She didn’t move.
“I can’t do it myself. Not on my face”
“Do you want to go to the hospital?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t safe for any of them to walk out now, but then what?
“Don't worry. I’ll talk you through it.”
He slid the supplies back to her, and something in her stomach jumped and fell. She thought about protesting, but now that he had the first buttons of his shirt undone showing dried blood on his neck, and strands of fair hair falling out of his unmade bun, he looked no older than her.
She frowned. It wasn't her fault he was here, he was a condition for her to be able to live in that apartment, away from his father. But she did feel a little responsible after the night’s events. Besides, he seemed to know something she didn't about the Yiga, so it couldn't hurt to play nice. She got up to wash her hands.
Zelda brought him a handheld mirror and sat down next to him. From so close, she could see a scar over one exposed forearm, another one along his neck. He gave her quiet, direct instructions while watching her from the mirror, and she worked with very steady hands.
“You’re good,” he complimented her when she was done, and her pulse picked up. She went over each stitch again, just to look busy. They looked like tiny blue flies sitting on his cheekbone. Her eyes skipped over to his, and he was already looking at her through blond eyelashes.
“Yeah, whatever.” She bit back a smile. “You look awful.”