sea legs

[the_empiricist]

Title: Sea Legs
Author: beanarie
Rating: R
Warnings: This story includes a rape scene between a primary character and an OC. While I made every effort to portray the act and its aftermath with sensitivity and respect, it's sure to be incredibly triggery.
Characters: Mal, Eames
Summary: A few seconds later, she realizes that she implied a claim on him. But he hasn't said anything, and her mouth is too busy to take back some thoughtless little tease.
Author's Note: I originally told woobie, my amazing artist for the reverse bang, that this wouldn't be more than 5k. It got up to ten, which officially makes it the longest fic I've ever completed and posted. Thank you so much to woobie, who kept throwing lovely and perfect Mal/Eames graphics at me every time I turned around (then adding a playlist because she is awesome) and who has been my partner in freaking out these past few weeks. There are also my betas, laria_gwyn and night_reveals. I never would have finished without their suggestions and support, and for them I have a lifetime supply of ♥s.



The crowd is gone, three quarters of the mourners already at their cars. A man with broad shoulders and horrible, horrible hair walks away from a double grave. When their eyes meet, he gives her a crooked sort of smirk that makes her knees lose strength for just a moment. Suddenly Mal thinks of how distracted Aunt Diana and Uncle James will be with the reception. If she didn't return to the house for, oh, twenty minutes, they probably wouldn't even miss her.

They make introductions at a lunch counter across the street. He has tea. She has a coffee. "So why not take your father back to France to be buried?" he asks.

"He was English." She takes off her hat and scratches at her scalp. Mal loathes hats, but circumstances dictated. "Ridiculously so. He was practically a Cockney, if you can believe it."

"I can't," he admits, smiling with his eyes. "You're the genetic clone of Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant. There isn't a scrap of this country in you."

"Appearances can be deceiving," she says. But he's right. More than a year has passed since the move, yet now that pneumonia has put her father in the ground, she feels adrift, out of sorts.

Thinking about it makes her realize that she really should go. She takes his number, but gets too distracted with work and tying up the loose ends of her father's life to even know that it's there. When her SIM card malfunctions, wiping itself clean, she remembers him and feels a bit of regret, but not too much.

After all, he didn't call her, either.

o0o

Cecile is twenty-one years old. Her two children are being held by her cousin because she has the worst taste in men Mal has ever witnessed. She is short, and squat, and she wears Converse sneakers covered in little pink skulls.

Mal wants so actively to be able to help her. "You're going to attend parenting classes," she explains in quiet French. "Anger management. Budgeting. Life skills. You'll have mandatory visitation with the children every Monday and Thursday."

"Will you be there with me?" Cecile whispers, flicking her eyes away from the judge for just a second. "At these classes?"

"For some of it, maybe," she allows. Really it depends on the agency she lands with and whether they care enough to accommodate Cecie's limited English skills. A lot of them don't, or they haven't the budget to keep an interpreter on staff for an extended period of time.

The judge says something else, and Mal takes a sip of water to cover a wince.

"What did he say?" Cecie touches Mal's sleeve. "When do I get my kids back?"

"Also," Mal translates. "Outpatient drug treatment."

"I don't do that shit!"

Cecie's advocate favors them with a glare.

"She says she doesn't do drugs," Mal explains to him.

He rifles through his papers. "Her urine tested positive for... something. Probably marijuana. This is standard. Tell her that after three months of negative tox screens, we'll revisit things. Maybe lighten her schedule."

"But what about her children?" He looks at her askance and she coughs. "She wants to know, if she does everything required of her, when does she get them back?"

"Nine months, as an estimate, as long as she has a regular job and a flat and she's staying far from felons and reprobates like her last two gentleman callers. But it could be longer. I've never worked with this judge before, so I can't say for certain."

The crumpled look on Cecie's face hits Mal right in the chest. "Nine months?" she says. "My baby, he won't be a baby any more."

"I know. I... " There isn't much to dislike about being an interpreter, but Mal misses her old job sometimes. She used to have more power than this. "I'm sorry. "

o0o

After Cecie's hearing, Mal doesn't have any more assignments, so she goes right to the bank to clean out her father's safety deposit box. It would make her feel better to have even one insignificant something stricken off her list. She's never done this before, cleared the world of every last trace of a person, so weeks went by before she learned the box even existed.

The contents get a desultory glance. It's only a few manila envelopes, most likely passports and old photos. They add almost no weight to her bag at all. When she finally extricates herself from the obsequious clutches of the bank manager, she steps outside and stops short.

Eames is in the parking lot, leaning against the front end of a Citroen.

Picking her way past a pile of what used to be bottles of beer, she eyes his plaid suit and porkpie hat with amused disdain. "Are you stalking me?" she asks. "Because that's a service I charge for. Expect a bill in the post."

It isn't until after they make their plans to meet up that she notices how many times he used the words "later" and "elsewhere."

"Why did the bank manager call you Forrester?" she asks. The man had approached just as she'd been leaving.

"Because I don't want to make it easy for him to find me." He manipulates the keys with his fingers until he's found the one he wants and inserts it into the ignition. "Within a month's time, he'll be involuntarily complicit in having cleaned out several of his most lucrative clients, and it will not endear him to the handsome devil sitting beside you. Even if he does think I'm nothing more than a go-between, to him, I am the face of the operation. Which is why it's good that he'll remember more about my clothes than my actual person."

She stares at him. "Why would you tell me that?"

His shrug and his smile each give a completely different answer. "Thought you might be impressed by my ingenuity."

Turns out he is quite a spectacular lay, a fact she learns fifteen minutes later as they fuck right there in his car. Forty minutes later they fuck on a bed she assumes is his. Their next "date" involves fucking in the flat of his friend (on holiday in Cornwall).

Work requires her to stay in Essex for three days. Bored out of her mind, she calls him the second night and they fuck in her half-grotty motel room.

At first it's everything she needs. Her headspace won't allow anything more than a physical relationship. After the Essex excursion, though, she thinks of what they are and she has this Pavlovian desire to shower. "I feel like one or both of us are married, carrying on like this," she says, pulling a red camisole over her head and smoothing the wrinkles out over her back and stomach.

As he fishes his trousers out from under the bed, he promises to buy her dinner. "You pick the place," he says, his voice floating up from the floor. "Though, if I may. Choose one with a large crowd. Rather defeats the purpose in showing me off if we go somewhere small and intimate, hm?"

Always trying to be so bloody cute. "Tell me you're not married."

His head slowly rises over the side of the bed. "I'm not," he insists.

It must be true, she decides, pushing his face away with one bare foot. No kept man would ever be allowed to possess that plaid suit.

He rings the next day. "Something, ah..."

"Eames?" She frowns at the impassive face of her mobile phone. "I don't think there's anything more to say."

"Darling, don't hang up," he says evenly, as though confident she'll do no such thing.

Her finger itching to click the red terminate button, she waits for him to explain why it even matters.

"Unavoidable obligation. I'll just be a bit late. Perhaps ten?"

"I refuse to sit in a restaurant for all of London to watch as I get stood up."

He makes this playful rasp of a sound, at once both a laugh and a sigh, and the last of her resolve crumbles to dust.

She drums her fingers on the table, pensive. "Come to mine," she says. "I'll make dinner."

"Oh," he says. "Mal, do you cook?"

She stifles a snort. "Does that shock you?"

"You are far too stunning to have to develop any sort of skill, in the kitchen or otherwise."

It takes her a few beats to decide whether she wants to smile or slap him. Not that either choice would affect him over the phone.

An hour later than she expects, he shows up at her door, moving like a pensioner with creaky, arthritic joints, his left cheek marred by a bloody contusion.

Because he is an adult who traveled across the city on his own power and isn't screaming in pain, she doesn't check his breathing or look for internal bleeds. But as she serves paella in the living room and puts on a DVD, there's an icepack on his face that she forced him to accept.

"I suppose I should see the other guy," she says, pressing on the wound to check for injury to the cheekbone. A slight concession; it really is a nasty bruise.

"Well." A surprised bark of laughter leads to a short coughing jag. "In this case, yes. It was a boxing match. A bit of damage back and forth is kind of the point."

"I don't remember seeing you on any posters."

He meets her gaze. "Wasn't that type of match."

This is another one of those moments where the world throws up a large "caution" sign. She merely adds it to the pile and stretches out next to him. "What's the word for that? Unsanctioned?"

"That, yes. Also 'unlicensed'."

"Quite dangerous, no?"

"Therein lies much of the appeal, actually," he says, and she can hear the smirk in his words.

It's all very adolescent, spooning on the couch watching nonsense about aliens. Practically chaste. She's almost afraid to turn up the volume on the television, lest one of her parents come in raising Cain.

He lets out a quiet hiss when she gets up for a fresh glass of wine.

"Oh. Merde, I'm sorry."

"It's nothing."

He's favoring his left side, so that's where her hand goes, sliding under his shirt to rest on his well defined stomach. "Does this hurt?"

"A little," he admits, his eyes bright and curious.

She tightens her hold slightly, skimming her thumb over the lines of muscle. "So what happened, just here?"

"Sadist," he whispers appreciatively. "I had no idea."

She can't help it. Instead of broken blood vessels and overtaxed nerve endings, damage in need of healing, all she can see is how he got that way. She licks her lips and unbuttons his shirt. The undershirt is noticeably absent, probably ruined in the fight, and all she finds is mottled sections of battered skin. "What did this?" she asks, focusing on a large half moon shape of blueish-purple. "I think a knee."

He cocks his head. "How did you know?"

She only smiles and slips her hand inside his shorts.

He closes his eyes and gasps. "Thought we were--aha--keeping things strictly above the belt tonight."

"Change in plan. You have only yourself to blame." She leans over and kisses him. "My big, strong man."

A few seconds later, she realizes that she implied a claim on him. But he hasn't said anything, and her mouth is too busy to take back some thoughtless little tease.



o0o

Nine days later, he is on her doorstep again, but this time it's a normal hour and she has no right to yell. He's wearing a suit, black, and a white shirt with a cheap tie that does nothing for him.

'Funeral wear,' her brain says, but she doesn't ask.

"Dinner," he says, his smile flashing on and off. "Let me be the one to show you off this time."

"This stays behind," she states, just before unraveling the knot of his tie and letting it fall to the floor. "I won't be seen with a man wearing that."

He reads the menu for two full sweeps of the second hand, so it's surprising when the waitress arrives, he asks for Duck a L'Orange, and her reply is, "Oh, we don't serve that."

"What I meant was Beef Wellington." Handing over the menu, he shrugs a bit. "Those two are always masquerading as the other without notice."

Mal orders a salad, fully expecting him to taunt her for acting the stereotype, but she sees that his nose is stuck in the wine list.

He lets it fall, and a look of frustration passes over his face so quickly she almost thinks she imagined it. "I'm at a loss," he admits. "You decide. Just nothing French. Please." It should be a joke, but his delivery has a strangely sharp edge.

She takes a sip from her water glass. "Is this the part where I apologize for my nationality?" she asks calmly.

"No." He drags a hand across his face. "No, of course not. I'm sorry. Don't know where that came from."

The couple seated two tables over makes loud comments about The King's Speech winning the Best Picture award in America. Somehow Mal and Eames turn that into a conversation about Nazi sympathizers in Allied countries, and the rest of the meal doesn't go quite as badly.

After dinner, on the way to the car, he gives her this smile that makes her think of cracks in a façade and she decides that she's had enough.

"Who died, Eames?"

He looks at her for a long time, then pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket to hand to her. On the cover is an old photo of ruddy-faced man sitting on a bar stool. A Hawaiian shirt, thinning blond hair, and toothy grin complete the picture of someone she may like to have met in real life.

Declan Matthew Michael McCarthy
April 4, 1959 - February 23, 2011

"I'm sorry," she says, handing back the program. "Was he a relative?"

"Not as such." He runs a hand through his hair and falls silent. Just as she's about to start back toward the car, he opens his mouth again. "My parents emigrated to Australia when I was sixteen. I told them I didn't want to go."

"And what did they say?"

"They said, 'No problem.'" One side of his mouth turns up for a moment. "Decks looked after me. Got me a job, by some definition of the word, made sure I wasn't starving in the gutter... that sort of thing."

'I would have gone to the burial with you,' something wants her to say. But the words would have tasted wrong. She sticks her hands in her pockets instead.

"You know, I think-" He shakes his head and lights a cigarette.

I think I shouldn't have had that last drink.
I think you look quite pretty in this light.
I think you were wrong about my tie.
I think I should try making an honest living before I end up in the ground myself.
I think I have to use the gents.
I think we should stop seeing each other.

I think I'm really beginning to fancy you.

It doesn't matter how she chooses to fill in the sentence. Each option is ultimately as absurd as it is valid. She sighs, quietly, then wraps her arms around his waist and sets her chin on his shoulder. "Lovely out here tonight," she says. "Not nearly as cold as it should be."

"Yeah," he agrees, and maybe she's projecting, but he sounds vaguely relieved.

o0o

After that he pulls another disappearing act, and it couldn't have come at a better time. She needed this reminder not to get too attached. So much of the time they're not in bed, he's odd and mercurial. Distant, forever covering up actual emotion with either flippant remarks or silence. She doesn't know what's going on his head, and that, she suspects, is exactly his intention. Not that she's any better. This isn't a thing with feelings. They don't progress; they don't fill in each other's empty spaces. They could if they wanted to, probably, but neither of them does.

After all these months, she can say that with almost absolute certainty.

She starts spending evenings with Raheem, an American working at the immigration office, who has the most joyous, all-encompassing laugh she has ever heard. He has a tendency to eat until he's uncomfortably full, then tip twice as much as he should. He's tall enough that her lips reach his breastbone, gawky as though he's unaware of how handsome he is, and he has interesting things to say about mass media and its influence on Western culture.

They last the month, but not much longer than that.

On her way out of court one day, Eames is standing outside the steps. By all appearances, he's been spending his money on cakes, beer, and orgasms. His cheeks are a healthy, windswept red, he's gained another half stone of muscle, and his hair needs cutting badly.

He places his hand on the small of her back and pulls her close. "What do you shampoo with?" he asks, nuzzling at her neck "Adore that smell."

Laughing as he plants a clumsy kiss on the back of her wrist, she tells herself that that feeling in the pit of her stomach isn't guilt. It's true. She doesn't feel ashamed about Raheem, but she doesn't miss him, either.

o0o

The judge is a good deal more amenable on Cecie's third court date than he was on previous occasions.

"Miss Salik," he begins, with what could almost be called a smile. Three fourths of a year of clean urine, decent attendance, and acceptable behavior have done a lot to improve his disposition.

He goes on to tell her that she and her worker are going to work out a schedule with the foster carer. The minor children should be back in her primary custody by the end of next week.

While the advocate is patting Cecie on the shoulder, Cecie grabs Mal's hand and squeezes. "This is good," the girl says. "This is so good."

Mal grins back. Cecie has learned a bit of English since the last time they met, but the advocate had wanted to make certain she fully understood what was going on today. Right now Mal kind of wants to send him flowers for that.

o0o

The judge signs Mal's timesheet, his good mood carrying over so that he even thanks her for her efforts.

Five minutes later, she steps into the ladies' toilet. She hears a loud sniff, then another. She spies the shoes of the person sitting in the only occupied stall. Converse with a pattern of pink skulls.

"Cecie? Are you crying?" she asks, banging her knuckle against the glossy black surface of the stall. "Honey, it's all right."

A glass vial falls to the floor, breaking into pieces on impact. A fine spray of white powder hits Mal's tan pumps.

The temperature in the room drops thirty degrees. "What the Hell was that? Cecie!"

The door to the stall bursts open. Cecie hurries past, sniffling and rubbing furiously at her nose.

"I'm sorry," she cries over her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Don't tell anyone. Just don't. Please. You can't."

Then she's gone and Mal is alone, rooted to the spot.

o0o

Over the next few hours, the two halves of Mal's brain seem to hold a contentious sort of tennis match.

During the drive home, the left side says that it may have been just a one time thing. The child welfare worker would have been able to tell if Cecie had been abusing drugs on a regular basis.

While waiting for the pasta to boil, the right side scolds Mal for leaving without alerting someone. Cocaine is not like marijuana. It isn't to be taken lightly.

As she washes the dishes, the left reminds everyone that court had been out of session, therefore there was no one to tell.

While trying and failing to follow that movie where Nicholas Cage played literary-minded twins, the right parries with the notion that it had still been relatively early in the day and it would not have been hard to find the judge's chambers.

The riposte from the left comes as she changes into pajamas. That would have destroyed all that Cecie has been working toward, leaving the children with the cousin and her overstuffed little house. Possibly for the rest of their lives.

Mal lies in bed, turns onto her back and thinks, out loud, "Fuck!" She slides on her lycra track suit, deciding that it doesn't matter that it's the middle of the night. If she doesn't do something to clear her head soon, she'll go mad.

Time for a run.

It's about a kilometer out and the streets are, for the most part, clear. There is the odd pedestrian, though. She isn't shocked to see the man at the corner kneeling down to tie his shoe.

He looks up with a sheepish smile. "Always forget to double-knot," he says.

His expression twists so quickly it's barely a warning at all. She has milliseconds to back away or call for help. And that's it.

He launches himself forward and hits her in the midsection, stealing her breath. She gasps and gasps, her vision gray. He lifts her off the ground. When she can see again, she's inside a van and he's closing the door behind them.

A hundred questions jump to the fore, but all she can do is stare as he takes out a long knife with a serrated blade.

"Keep still now," he says. "I'll cut you. I'll cut you so deep your pretty fucking head will come off." He grasps her jaw with his right hand, increasing the pressure until she makes a pained noise. "Don't think I won't."

He gets in close, and she squeezes her eyes shut so she can't look at him.

"No cheek, neither," he continues. "I don't want to hear a sound."

The same hand travels inside her waistband, over her buttocks, and he shoves her leggings and underwear down so they're tight around her ankles. He pries her knees apart and holds them down with his lower body.

She feels the blunt end of the knife pushing against first one side of her ribcage, then the other. Then he lifts her head and shoulders slightly to pull off the ruined sports bra. The back of her head rebounds off the floor of the van.

He rests his face beneath her breasts, his lips pressing to her navel, and he inhales deeply.

'No," she mouthes. 'No, please don't. Please.'

With a shuddering moan, he tears into her.

'No condom,' she registers. Tears bypass the curve of her cheeks, drip into her ears and puddle around her neck. The specter of disease and pregnancy slams against the icy wall of shock over and over until it's shattered completely. She's overcome with the need to end this, end it now. Her eyes fly open. He's distracted, likely will be that way until just after he's reached climax.

She lifts a shoulder and tries to turn onto her side, dislodging the knife at her throat for what she can only hope are at least a few precious seconds, and she screams.

A wet warmth trickles down the left side of her chest, and she spares a thought for the layers of skin he separated. To wonder how far he got into the muscle, if he reached the bone. But only a thought. She keeps screaming until he punches the air out of her stomach.

"Slapper," he hisses.

Over the sound of her coughs, she hears banging, muffled voices. The pubs have let out, releasing a steady trickle of passersby. Witnesses. People are demanding to know what's happening inside.

He swears again, and the world begins to spin. The van, the van, the van. The door of the van. The streetlights. The buildings. The road.

And then, nothing.
o0o

Twenty three stitches it takes to close up the slice he made in her upper chest.

Her left ear and the surrounding skin is purple and tender to the touch from where she cracked her head on the road. They let her go after twenty four hours, the discharge nurse giving her a card for a social worker and telling her that she should not go home alone. Mal rings her uncle, despite a strong urge to do the opposite of what everyone says just because she can. After being fed a story about a taxi and a traffic collision, James and Diana play the host graciously. They allow her to hold on to embraces too long and to touch at every available opportunity, easily three times more often than she used to.

It's not enough to erase him from her skin's memory, and she can't ask them for more. She returns home after two days.

She takes a week from work because she can't imagine staying out any longer than that, even though she's been picked apart, picked clean, and there's nothing left of her but bones. Every possible minute she can she spends in public spaces, haunting crowded bus depots, cinemas and pubs, feeling safe and unchallenged by the vast, churning mass of strangers. The messages pile up on her phone, but she always has something more important to do than listen to them. Then once it's full, cleaning out her inbox becomes too intimidating a task to even begin to contemplate. It's so much easier to just leave it behind.

o0o

The Sunday before she is to return to work, she answers the door because it doesn't occur to her not to. It's nine am. She's only just arrived home for a change of clothes and to see if, maybe, she can rest. No one would be calling at this hour except for the landlord.

The landlord and Eames, as it turns out.

"Mal Miles, you are uncommonly difficult to pin down," he says. His tone is lacking something, and she wonders how many of those unanswered messages were his.

Pinned down is exactly how she feels, like a butterfly in one of her great-uncle's picture frames. She lets him in, hoping the disquieting feeling goes away soon. "Tea?" she asks, starting down the hallway.

He grabs her by the wrist. "Stay still," he demands.

She silently shivers at the echo of a voice saying, Keep still now.

"-Just for one second. I've been trying to find you for three days. Stop bloody moving."

"What- I- I've been out." She tugs back, but he won't release her. "I'm sorry I haven't rang, all right? My phone has been-"

"You need to tell me what you know about him," he says in a tight voice. "Everything. All of it."

Briefly Mal considers looking down to see if he really did just drill a hole through her midsection.

"Any detail you can think of. Race, accent, tattoos, the color of his clothes..."

Recoiling, she latches onto the closet door in her peripheral vision as though it's a viable escape.

His eyes widen. He lets her hand slip from his grasp.

"I've cocked this up," he says, his voice crackling and hoarse. "Fuck, I have. I'm so sorry."

'You should be,' she wants to say, but she's having a hard time concentrating. Her pulse has amplified to a loud, throbbing whoosh in her ear. It won't let her think.

His expression has changed, turning him into a man she still doesn't quite recognize. But she likes him better than the one who walked in the door, and she allows him to clasp the sides of her face. "I wasn't thinking. Mal, forgive me. I shouldn't have frightened you. I just want to know."

"It's not your place." She tries to shake her head. "Let it go."

His thumbs brush over her cheeks while his words wash over her, so reasonable. "No no no. Shhhh. Look look look. I only want to help make sure you're safe. God, I'm sorry. It's just… He's out there right now." So reasonable. But only in tone.

One meaty hand is covering her bruised ear and it hurts, but she would take it. Genuine affection feels like oxygen to her now, and she would accept really almost anything from him. If only he would listen to what she's trying to say.

Mal lifts her hands and breaks away from him with one swift, sharp movement. The fire behind his eyes blazes bright before it subsides. "I'm not telling you anything," she says, breathing like she just ran fifty meters. "Who- who are you? Jesus Christ, what are you doing here?"

"Mal," he begins.

"Shut up." She brushes away angry tears while he stands there, vibrating on the balls of his feet. "Curiosity's burning you up so badly, you can find out what I told the police same way you found out that it happened. But you won't get it from me. D-don't ask again."

The expression on his face shifts to something less placating and more regretful. "Mal, I-"

"Stop." She holds up a hand, buying time. Her heartbeat needs to settle down before she can put together the words to make him leave.

Seconds tick past as she convulsively kneads the back of her neck. It feels like her vertebrae have fused and petrified. Everything has gone jagged and rock hard.

His hands land on her shoulders. Since he doesn't seem to be asking anything of her, she lets him rub away some of the ache, still not sure, though, if she forgives him.

"I'm so tired," she says, without entirely meaning to.

She thinks about fleeting moments. Dumping Aunt Diana's needlepoint on the floor so she could curl up tight on the sofa, wishing she could walk three doors down and crawl into bed with the both of them like she was a little girl. Finding a picture of her father in the hallway and, for the first time, hating him for not being here, rather than the illness that made him go. And, after, riding the most popular tube at rush hour from one stop to another to another until there's a free seat, then giving herself permission to drift off. Because she's surrounded and nothing can happen to her, not in front of all these people. No one can drag her off and use his teeth to lay her bare.

She's only half aware that she's speaking out loud until a gentle pressure to her jaw guides her gaze up to meet his.

"Would it-" He swallows. "Would it help if I were there with you? Would you want to?"

She stares, mystified, until her brain catches up. "Oh. Please? God, please."

The need to justify herself has her babbling all while he sits on one side of the bed and she struggles to find a comfortable position on the other. "I'll be all right if I can just... sleep." Inch by inch she drifts closer, drawn by his body heat and something else. "Just once. I won't ask you again." When she comes to a stop, her cheek is resting on a denim-covered thigh. "Because. Because I can't- I'm not ready for-"

"You didn't ask. You don't have to ask. I'm here." His hand runs lightly up and down her arm. "Your big, strong man," he says, sounding brittle.

She doesn't know what to say to that. She wouldn't, even if she weren't already halfway gone.

o0o

It is nine am when he helps her fall asleep. Just after one pm, she's wide awake. That's how biology works. Fractured sleep patterns don't repair themselves in one day. Her head is pounding, but she's somewhat used to that by now. The effects of a concussion tend to linger, particularly with women. Plus she's slightly dehydrated. The aches, she's accustomed to those as well. They go along with having been beaten and pushed out of a van.

Then the elevated body temperature. That's unwelcome, though not completely unexpected.

"Mal?"

"Shhh."

"Love, you're cooking me." She very nearly wants to laugh at that. There's a hollow quality to his voice, but he sounds almost like normal. "While I do enjoy gaining this perspective on the final moments in the life of a prize pheasant, I really feel that I should phone a professional. Or grab some paracetamol, at the very least."

"Please don't move," she breathes, and he doesn't say another word.

By two o'clock, she's so nauseated she could crawl out of her own skin.

She ends up having to run. If she stayed in bed a second longer, she'd be lying in her own sick. He joins her in the toilet with a wet towel and a glass of water. "This isn't the head injury," he says, but it's half in question.

"No, it's just- it's a bug," she confirms, washing out her mouth. Muzzily she spews out a handful of passages from an old immunology textbook, relating more than any lay person needs to know about the link between stress/trauma and depressed immune system. Then she stirs, realizing something a little too late.

"That was coherent," he says, mildly, approving. "Almost too much so."

He understood her rambling, despite the dry medical jargon. Despite it being in French. "You never told me you spoke my language," she says. Apparently she never has to speak English again.

"I've always meant to." He places his arm against her back, bracing to help her get off the floor. "But that charming little Continental tinge to your English... It's possible I didn't want to give that up, even for a moment."

He doesn't usually sound this wistful when he's putting her on.

At eight pm, with orange juice and dry toast waiting patiently to be digested, she leaves a message on her supervisor's voicemail requesting another two week's leave. Then she rolls over, laying her head on his stomach, and sleeps until just before the sun comes up.

o0o

In a lot of ways, things get worse as her physical symptoms clear up. When she was sick and shaky, she had an excuse for not being in her right mind. She could blame the legs that wouldn't hold her weight, the stomach that wouldn't keep down food.

She keeps wanting to tell him that he's free to leave. She keeps not doing so.

They go to the seaside. She gets sunburn on her nose and shoulders, drinks her lunch and dinner, and gives him permission to kiss her. By the time she goes back to work, her bruises have gone away. She's healed enough to pretend that nothing's wrong.

One afternoon he takes her to a yellow door with a glass panel on the side and a flyer advertising a support group for survivors of sexual assault. Today's date is listed under the section for meetings.

Mal opens her mouth to say something graceful and understanding and out comes, "Fuck off."

He strokes her hair, unrepentant. "I have to leave on Monday," he says, his breath tickling her ear. "And you can't come with me."

So she now has to learn to be okay without him around. She appreciates how he can acknowledge that she's turned clingy and insane without coming right out and saying it. She feels less wrong this way.

"It won't fix me." The petulance in her voice makes her cringe. That was supposed to be a warning, so he doesn't expect her to be magically mended and unbroken two hours from now. But the way she came off, she may as well have stomped her foot. "I mean-"

He kisses her and lets go entirely too quickly. "Je t'aime," he says and it feels so right and natural she's saying it back before she can even register what's happening.

The enormous grin on his face does not fit the surroundings at all, but she can't help returning it, just a little, as he walks away.

o0o

Janice and Latoya, the women who run the group, are survivors themselves. They tell everyone who speaks that there's no rule book for getting over this. Even though Mal doesn't tell her story, she hears them, and she feels less alone. People are victimized sometimes for no reason, without warning, and there's nothing left to do but get past it. She makes the meetings a part of her weekly routine, for the confirmation that, maybe, at some point in her life, she won't be a complete mess.

Eames goes. And Eames comes back. This cycle repeats on a regular basis. Sometimes he tells her where he goes and why, relating tales of places she's either never been or never viewed the way he does. Often, though, he has nothing to say. She isn't exactly fine with that. Still, it's so much more than she ever thought she would have with him that she lets it go.



o0o

The location for the boxing match is dingy and it smells of things gone rotten.

After several rounds, Eames prowls the space inside the ring, his torso slick with sweat, chest heaving, with one eye transitioning from red to purple and a deep cut across the bridge of his nose.

In the fifth round, three rapid-fire punches to his left kidney send him crashing to the mat, and he doesn't get up again.

She leaps to her feet as two men actually carry Eames out of the ring. It could be a bleed, a rupture, broken ribs...

She doesn't know if she'd even be allowed to call an ambulance here.

"Oi, brown jacket!" someone shouts. "Brown jacket! You're wearing a brown jacket!"

A gangly-limbed young man in his early twenties steps into her view.

"You the French woman?" he asks, pushing hair the color and texture of straw out of his eyes.

Restraining the desire to kick him in the kneecap for blocking her way, Mal blinks at the curious phrasing. "I suppose I must be."

"Grand." He hands her a scrap of paper. "Don't tell nobody I didn't deliver this until now, yeah? I was kind of 'sposed to find you at the start. But Isaac got his own business here, don't he?" He runs thin fingers along the zipper of his jacket. "You wouldn't be in the market for a new watch, would you, beautiful? A present for your no doubt equally French and lovely mum, perhaps?"

A large man chases the boy away, shouting about petty criminals.

"Wait!" she says. "Isaac!" She holds out her hand, then remembers the note. If it can be called a note. The paper has only a few words scribbled on it.
wink wink
- E

She swears softly but fluently. Then she laughs until she doesn't want to kill him any more.

o0o

Eames's apology is an epic poem, consisting of numerous stanzas and continuing even as she's locking her front door behind them. "So then Claude was reminding me, 'Don't forget to go down in the fifth' and there was no way to get word to you apart from Isaac the tit. Honestly, it's so rare that I'm asked to take a dive it completely slipped my mind. I'm so sorry for the heart attack. Really, I am."

"So you said," she responds, helping him off with his shirt and leaving it in a rain and sweat soaked mound on the floor.

He leans against the wall with an eloquent groan. "And it's not usually so dramatic, with the carrying out and everything, but Micky, he's trying to get in with some bigwigs in the audience and he needed a show of force. It had to look... unequivocal."

She combs his hair back and promptly loses track of the seconds, zoning out on the wet strands slipping through her fingers, the proximity of her body to his, the dried blood on his face. What would she have done if the worst had happened? No, really, what?

His eyes have gone soft. "That bit of fiasco notwithstanding," he says quietly, "it was... nice, having someone there."

She clears her throat. "Harry. If you do not stop talking, I will punch you myself."

He affects a wounded air. "Not half an hour ago, you thought me grievously injured. The shock from that wore off in short order. Sick of the sound of my voice already?"

She grins. "Just the words, really."

As she kisses his neck, his hands go to her waist, slide along her lower back, and pull at the hem of her shirt. "You're sure?" he asks.

"Yes. I am very-" She kisses the notch at the base of his throat. "Very sure." And now she's reached his mouth, and he doesn't seem to need any more convincing.

It's almost shocking, how much she's missed this.

They make their way to the bedroom, leaving a breadcrumb trail of clothing down the hall. Eames has to lie low for a few days as a request from his opponent, to fuel rumors that he'd put Eames in hospital. She can't help reflecting on how serendipitous that is. Suddenly she has plenty of ideas for how to pass the time, starting with that bruise on his back. She wants to feel its heat with her tongue.

Then his lips brush against her navel.

She freezes. It could have been accidental. Doesn't make a difference.

He seems not to notice anything wrong at first. When he doesn't move on, she shoves at his head. It still isn't fast enough. She slaps him, right over his black eye.

"Wh-what? What?"

"Don't," she says. "Don't do that. Don't ever do that."

"Fuck." His face falls. "Fuck." And then, "I'm sorry."

"No. No, we're okay. It's- it's fine. Come back up." Impulsively she takes his hand and holds it against her ear, recreating the moment she knew he would be there. She kisses him and she tries. She tries.

The same sense of horrified urgency runs through her like an electric current until she breaks away, shaking.

"S-Stay there, all right?" she begs, breathing hard. She can't seem to look at him.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says, solid, dependable.

She hates him so much it's blinding. "I changed my mind. Move. Leave." He lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling, while she throws on sweatpants and a t-shirt. "Do not be here when I get back."

As she laces up her running shoes and strides out the door, she expects him to call out, but he doesn't. It's fine, she tells herself. Just run. Run on the same streets in the same neighborhood, because it wouldn't happen twice. These things don't happen twice.

o0o

She has a little trouble letting herself back in the flat, the four coffees she downed at the restaurant making her head a little dizzy and causing her hands to shake. Bob Marley is playing on the stereo, and Eames has broken into her wine cabinet. From the looks of things, he's about three glasses deep into the Shiraz. Plus he's been smoking inside, which they've talked about before.

After sitting down, after a long beat of silence, she clears her throat. "I thought-"

"Oh, haven't you noticed?" He doesn't look up from his magazine. "I'm crap at following direction. It's what kept me from pursuing a career in the theater."

She's already forgotten what she'd meant to say. "Give me one of those cigarettes."

He snorts. "For seventy-five p, maybe. These things don't grow on trees."

She turns, burying her face in the junction between his neck and shoulder. His arm grows around her waist like a vine, but apart from that he doesn't react.

"I've got a friend," he says, turning the page. "Might have a line on a treadmill." He shakes her a bit. "Eh?"

Of course he saw her arrive by taxi. Of course.

She grabs him, clutching tightly, not saying a word about how her heart stopped every time a car pulled up to park on the street, or how she instinctively curled an arm around her ribs whenever it looked like someone was coming toward her. And he doesn't ask her to. He doesn't go "sh", tell her it's all right, or complain that her tears are soaking his shirt. He just holds on.

o0o

Outside a green grocer's, she sees Cecie across the street, carrying a toddler in her arms and pulling a pre-schooler by the hand. She turns her head as the little girl says something and Cecie responds, a warm, friendly smile on her face. The wind carries the sound of their voices intermingling together. They're singing.

An hour from now, a day from now, a month from now, they may present a completely different picture, but this is the one Mal has. This is what she'll keep with her.

o0o

Two inspectors, D'Antonio and Barrie, come to her stoop with a photograph.

"Could this be yours?" Barrie asks, holding up a photo of crumpled black and violet fabric. She's quite tall, and with the sun just overhead, Mal has to squint to look her in the eye.

"P-Possibly? I can't really-"

Eames strolls up behind the inspectors, making Mal flinch. "Inside would be better for this, right?" he asks.

There's no recognition or spark of animosity when the police see him. Mal is darkly amused to find herself a little disappointed by this.

"That was found in the flat of a man named Joseph Hopper," D'Antonio says, nodding toward the photo as he sips tea from Mal's favorite mug. "You said your attacker took your top, Miss."

She clutches the photo. "It's mine. Yes." The garment is misshapen and stained with blood, yet unmistakable once she got a decent look.

"So you have this Hopper in custody?" Eames asks.

Barrie rolls her head back, stretching her neck with an audible crack. "In a manner of speaking," D'Antonio allows.

Mal stares at their second photo as Barrie tells the story. Detectives investigate the flat of Joseph Hopper, aged thirty nine, after a neighbor pushes through his open front door to find him swinging by the neck in his living room. Medics rush him to hospital while the police search for a suicide note or evidence of foul play. They discover, on the bottom of his closet, several items of clothing that paint a disturbing picture. So they make inquiries, and find connections to three cases of assault.

"The first was in Edinburgh," D'Antonio explains. "She's working with police there. The third was just released from hospital herself. You're the second, Miss Miles."

"So is it him?" Barrie asks. "Is that the man?"

"I don't know." The man she sees is smiling and still. The one she remembers hadn't seemed capable of smiling, and he'd never stopped moving. "There was... a scar. Across the back of his right hand." She traces a finger along her own hand to demonstrate.

"I'll ask," D'Antonio says. He pulls a mobile from his jacket pocket and leaves the room.

"What's his condition?" Eames asks, glancing at the photo of Hopper. Mal darts forward to hand it off to Barrie. Not that it matters, considering that Eames heard them say the man's name.

"The neighbor, he held off the suicide, but not for too terribly long," Barrie says. "It's the machines keeping him going now."

D'Antonio reappears in the doorway. Everyone looks up, but Mal is the one he favors with a solemn nod. She looks at the photo again and it seems much more clear. This is him.

Someone else must be controlling her body when she says "Thank you," and shakes their hands. She can't imagine what they have done to deserve her thanks.

After they leave, she holds out her hand, bouncing her fingertips off the wall as she walks.

"Mal?"

She clears her throat loudly, making a coughing sound to serve as a back-off gesture. This isn't anger, exactly. She doesn't know what it is, only that it isn't rational and it doesn't want an audience.

Some time later she leans against the doorway of the living room. Tiny shards of ceramic clinging to the soles of her shoes mingle with the carpet fibers. She'll have to hoover it later. "We're out of saucers," she croaks.

"Riesling as well," he says, rising from the couch and dropping the remote behind him. "And while the former can wait to be rectified, the latter cannot. I know the perfect place."

"It's not a celebration," she says. Also, it's barely lunch-time.

He presses his keys into her hand. "Of course not."



What it is, is an unsettling mix of wake and retirement party.

"You didn't..." Mal begins, then trails off. "I mean- You didn't..."

"Mal," he says, his voice deceptively casual. "You didn't happen to notice the dates?"

"What?" Vaguely she recalls asking Barrie when it happened and receiving an answer. The discussion took place only a short time ago, but the details have to be summoned one by one. It's incredibly frustrating.

"We were in Normandy for the weekend. You remember."

"I do," she acknowledges, and then she stares into her nearly full pint glass.

"I won't lie," he says, the words forcing her to look up. "I would have, if I'd had the chance. Not that. But... something."

She releases a breath and just nods.

While Eames smokes, refills his glass, and strikes up short chats with the few people who walk in, Mal gazes into the same slowly disappearing pint and makes designs in salt on the table. She is not happy that Joseph Hopper is on the verge of donating his organs at the age of thirty-nine. That is not who she is. Yet the weight she's been carrying on her shoulders is undeniably... lighter.

She looks around at the smoke-stained wallpaper and the wooden surface dotted with circular cigarette burns. "This pub must be special," she says, shivering a bit.

His eyes light up. "Otherwise why would I take you to such a shithole?"

She looks down, smiling without showing her teeth. "I would not use that word."

"No. You would say... merdehole?"

"Trou de merde, in the strictest literal sense."

"Well, this trou de merde happens to be mine."

She furrows her brow. "You own this place?"

"Indeed. Used to be Declan's and I was Declan's heir, so legally speaking it belongs to me."

"And physically speaking?"

"Ownership is split between me and one other."

If he wanted her to know more about the partner, he would have said, so she doesn't press. She does, though, yank a section of his shellacked hair. "My drink has been empty for decades," she says. There are things she cannot stand about him. The taste of Earl Grey and tobacco ash on his tongue. The yellow stains in the armpits of his undershirts. His belief that anyone he rings automatically knows that it's him, so he can just jump right into whatever subject prompted the call without preamble. The way he remains fixed in the scratchy midpoint between clean-shaven and bearded. Most of all, she hates what he does to his hair when he goes out in public. The pomade and side-part make him look fastidious and overly particular, like an accountant. "You are the worst host."

He grins at her and catches her hand in his own so he can brush a kiss on her fingers. "M'lady," he murmurs, rising from his seat.

If he were to change any of those things, she wouldn't know what to do with herself.

A blonde enters the pub. She's a fresh-faced girl, young and athletic, slender except for her rounded belly. Mal clocks her at about six months, and is thrown to see her look at Eames and cry out his name.

"Yelina? Shit." Eames reaches her in a few long strides. He isn't particularly surprised to see her, and that, Mal decides, that helps.

They carry on a conversation in increasingly tense Russian, Yelina's half interrupted by the occasional groan and hitching of breath as she clutches her abdomen. Eames looks completely at sea.

Mal doesn't hesitate in approaching. "She's in pain," she says.

Eames looks at her, his hand against Yelina's ear in an eerily familiar way. "She thinks the baby's coming. But it's too- far too early, and-"

"No hospital," Mal finishes for him.

He shakes his head. Yelina lets out a sob and tries to sink to the floor. Throwing a supportive arm around her waist, Eames murmurs in her ear and kisses her cheek.

"I'm going to touch you now, yes?" Mal asks Yelina. After getting a shaky nod, she does a quick check of the girl's pulse with one hand while lightly pressing on her stomach with the other. "There's a flat upstairs?"

"Yeah, it's, um, hers."

"Well, let's get her back there."

He doesn't question her, instead lifting Yelina into his arms and climbing out of the smoky dark, trusting Mal to follow.

When they settle her in bed, Eames makes an abortive movement to leave, but between Yelina's grip on his arm and Mal's smirk, he goes nowhere.

"We could use your skills as interpreter," Mal says.

"Lina speaks passable English," he says, eyeing the girl. "Would be better if she practiced." He stays put, however, and doesn't complain again.

o0o

The silence is broken by Yelina, breathing quietly and evenly in sleep.

"Okay," Mal says, rubbing her forehead with the back of her wrist. "There was something about a coffee machine downstairs?"

He gives a tired smile. "Broke before St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. But there's a restaurant around the corner. I'll buy you dinner."

"Parfait." She smiles and leans in as he touches her face.

"You are full of surprises, sweetheart," he croons.

Shrugging, she looks to Yelina. "So she's illegal then?"

He nods and his hands travel to Mal's shoulders, where they set about erasing several hours of tension. "More ways than one. She's hiding from a murder charge, as well."

Mal tries not to groan with pleasure. This is not the place or time for that. "Did she really kill someone?"

"Hm. Probably," he says lightly. "But she wouldn't have done without a very good reason."

A knock at the door makes them both jump.

On the other side is a South Asian gentleman with a beard and a rounded shape. "I'm told there was an incident," he says in greeting, once they've joined him in the hall. "We didn't lose Declan Jr., did we?"

"Everything seems all right for now." Eames answers for her, and she's okay with that. Despite the long-forgotten, much-missed buzz of accomplishment, she is tired and she doesn't know this man, or, even, the girl she just spent the evening helping. Eames could tell them the baby is possessed by a Zoroastrian demon and she wouldn't do a thing to dispute it.

The man tilts his head toward her. "It seems we're indebted to you, Miss Miles."

"I did very little," she demurs, wrongness jangling a distant bell. It feels odd that this stranger knows her name. "Apparently the baby did not want to be a Virgo after all."

"Rob said you put your hands on her like someone who knew what they were doing." He moves one foot as if to take one step closer, but ends up staying where he is. "Are you a midwife? A nurse?"

"Medical student," she answers, ignoring the voice telling her to lie. "In my former life. Left two years ago, just before my final term."

"So you were very nearly there. Almost Doctor Miles."

"Yusuf," Eames says, the same way a mother would call a child on the verge of touching a hot stove.

"Would you like a job, Almost-Doctor Miles?" Yusuf asks.

"No, she absolutely fucking would not."

"Eames, we are not in the dark ages," he scolds in return. "Let the lady decide for herself. Tch, cave man. You're embarrassing us all."

She holds up one hand. "Eames will tell me more, and I'll think about it," Mal says. "But for now-" She takes Eames's arm. "We're late for a dinner engagement."

"I am amenable to those terms." Yusuf nods, smiling slightly. "I like her, you know?"

Eames shows him two fingers.

o0o

"My father, he had Multiple Sclerosis. Not so bad when I was a teenager, but." She shrugs, letting her lips quirk. "As he got worse and worse, he wanted to come home. He never came out and said it, but the look on his face when my uncle rang... He wouldn't speak for hours after they hung up."

"So you came here."

"So I came here. Couldn't very well shunt him across the channel by himself." She pulls at the pendant around her neck. "At first, I didn't have the time to start here where I left off there. Of course. He needed me. And after. Well."

"About this job," he says, after the young waiter has refilled their drinks and gone. "This is not clean. This is not your cozy Parisian teaching hospital. Fail to save the wrong person and you will be killed. Get caught and there goes any hope you may have had for a medical career."

"I understand completely," she says, taking a long drink of coffee. Caffeine mixing with the adrenaline still lingering in her system, she thinks about it. No hospital administrators. No classrooms. No dissection. No rotations. No paperwork. None of that wretched, pathetic sense of competition, or catnapping on an exam table to keep from having to be awake for thirty six hours at a stretch.

She could keep her interpreter position and, every once in a while, save someone's life.

"I'm not in love with that little smile you're wearing," he says, circling her face in the air with his finger. "This post. It was last held by Declan, I'll have you know. In case you need reminding, he's the chap with a baby coming that he'll never see, that he never even knew about."

"Is this how he died?"

"Well. No." Using great care, he guides his leftover rice into a sort of anthill on the plate. "Liver failure. He was somewhat fond of, um. Heroin."

"Eames," she says until he looks at her. "What's life without a little risk?"

He makes a derisive little huff as he tears off a bit of garlic bread with his teeth.

Her hand gravitates to his and soon their fingers are entwined. She still feels unsettled when they aren't touching. She still spends more time working out and cleaning her apartment than sleeping when he's away. Yet now she's thinking about the friends she's made at various hospitals around the city. She's making a mental list of medical supplies in order of how difficult they will be to obtain. And it feels kind of wonderful. "Tell me. However did you learn Russian?