A Fine Line

[Connor Kent]

Connor's sleep was chaotic jumble of images and emotions. Everything that had happened over the last few days like vivid paintings, but melted and thrown together into a kaleidoscopic mixture. Did I do all right, bud? Did you see your dad? Ayden's foot brushing his leg. "If I've got a leak in me then I want to find out with the good stuff. Beer, whiskey, whatever."
Those little children. Standing so close to Ayden while getting the steaks. "Well, if he wants a different kind of cherry, I'll be right over here."
Kicking the man while seeing a red haze. "I want to be the person you could love."
Burn down his throat from a shot of rum. Ayden looking up at him with absolute utter openness in her eyes. The eyes of the man that was going to kill him. "I think that's a dude."
"I was hired to kill a man."
Hiding in the room. "Today, Ayden Hayes is real because of you."
The little girl on her knees. It all blended together, overlaid with the smells of colors and sounds of emotion. His stomach churned all night long, he woke repeatedly, sometimes with tears in his eyes.

When the light from the sun finally woke him, he was emotionally drained. He just lay there. Nothing made any sense. He was adrift. He shifted his leg and felt cold metal. Looked. The keys. He sat up and picked them up. A bundle of keys. Each one opening some stash of guns or whatever. He counted them. 15. 15 boxes or storages or whatever that Ayden- or Anne- he didn’t even know what to think of her as- 15 collections of weapons she had. How many people had she killed? Do you really want to know the answer to that? It was like asking how many men she had slept with. Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to. But in his mind, each key represented a….what had she called it? A ‘mark.’ Such a callous way to hide the fact that you were talking about killing someone for money. I killed someone. Yeah, but not for money. Still. He had taken a life. But it was hard to feel bad for that man’s family. If they knew the things he was doing….He wasn’t thinking straight.

Another memory, though, came to him. And despite himself, he felt so tender and appreciative for Ayden- she was Ayden to him. He’s lying on the bed, crying and missing his son so much. He feels the bed shift, feels her arms around him, the press of her against his back, her words in his ears. And then he is being held by her and crying into her bosom and she just holds him and comforts him, being here for him. The memory of it left him quiet. That was real. She is not a monster. She does feel. Maybe what she said was true. Maybe she really did want to end that life. He held the keys in his hands. She had given them to him as she confessed everything, the pain she was feeling evident. Part of him clung to that desperately. There was always hope. But…he wasn’t sure he could just go to her. Not now. Maybe not ever. He was too scared to risk his heart again.

But he would keep the keys. They would remind him. He wanted to believe in her. Maybe he already did. But he had to be sure. His heart had to. It was strange. The mind could know something, have evidence for it, believe it even. But the heart was not to be ordered around. It did what it did for its own reasons.

He felt terrible. If she really was telling the truth, then how would his not going to her make her feel? Wouldn’t she feel rejected? Or maybe even say “Fuck it. This isn’t worth the struggle” and go back to being a murderer. It tore at him. And yet….he couldn’t force himself.

I have to go, to get out of this apartment for a while. A run would do. Get his body moving, letting the animal machine take over, go on instinct and mechanics. Maybe he’d figure things out. He opened the night stand drawer and saw the box that had a few precious memories. One of Hayden’s baby teeth. A card from his mom. The note Ayden had left him. “I want to be with you too.”
He remembered how much it meant to him, to see that. And it was what she had said earlier. He paused for a moment, then put the keys in with them. He wasn’t sure if that was where they should go, but somehow it felt right.

He got dressed and walked out the door.
Edited by Connor Kent, Jun 18 2014, 04:27 PM.

[Ayden]

Ayden didn't bother looking out the peephole, it didn't matter who was at the door she was expecting someone. But even though she knew it wouldn't be Connor, she had hoped, and her hope was dashed with the two large brutish men standing at her door. She backed up from the door and with a wave of the hand showed the men where the box was.

They looked at her with interest. She ignored them. They got to work and their large sweaty selves took the large box away. Ayden stood in the doorway and watched the box move down the hall and towards the elevator.

Chance, happenstance, whatever you wanted to call it. Connor stood in his doorway watching the box leave behind the elevator doors. She smiled at him and went back inside. He knew where she lived, he could talk to her if he wanted to. But she wasn't going to bother him not for a while anyway. He had a choice to make, and her presence wasn't going to make it any easier.

Ayden thought about finding another apartment, but that was too much work, and she didn't want to move, not really. She wanted to see him on the way out, in the elevator. Wherever. How else was he going to know that she'd stopped. Not that he'd have anything to compare it to. It's not like he even knew what to look for before. Ayden just came to be, everyone would be doing the same thing, seeing her for the first time.

Deep Breath. Ayden had to go out the front door, down the elevator and into the world out of disguise. She had not done that in ages. She couldn't remember the last time she had. The last time she'd walked out the door as only herself. Probably when she left home for boot-camp. That was so very long ago.

One step at a time. And that had to be the first one. Out the door.

Ayden got ready. The only pair of contacts she had left were the fire colored ones. They weren't anything special, just purely cosmetic. No sensors, nothing but show. She smiled. At least there were some comforts she would have. But that brought to question something else. The money she had in bank accounts unknown. At first she'd need the money. This place wasn't cheap. She'd only use it on things for surviving, until she found a job. She'd struggle, she wanted the struggle. She wanted to go to school, for what? she didn't know. But she knew she had to. Her only skills were in killing someone. That didn't lend to too much real world things. So school and rent. That's all. The cash she had on hand, which was quite a bit for someone who was supposed to be struggling, would have to do until she got a job.

A job, a real job. Ayden hadn't ever had a real one, not even in high school, not unless you consider babysitting your kid cousins a job, which Ayden did not.

First things first though... Ayden pulled on a grey sweater and a matching pair of grey jeans. The boot she choose hadn't been meant for cold weather, but she didn't care. As long as they survived one day she'd be happy with the purchase. She had to go get more appropriate clothes anyway, a computer, who didn't have a computer these days. And a wallet. Live revolved around them these days. It served as money, ident cards and everything else in between. It meant tracking her was possible. While Ayden was clean, her life was not. She'd made lots of enemies, and if anyone found out, there would be lots of damage.

Ayden finished the ensemble with a white scarf, a grey trench coat and a gray wool hat. Time had passed, Ayden didn't really pay attention, she had no way of knowing. Between the showering, makeup and dressing, there was no real way to tell the time she'd taken. She knew it hadn't been quick by any standards. But she was ready to go.

Ayden put the remaining money into a handbag that matched and walked out the door.

She walked out the door, into the elevator and down into the lobby. She stood there staring at the glass doors. A first time for everything. She took a deep breath, pushed opened the glass door and went into the world for the first time, as herself, as Ayden Hayes.

[Connor Kent]

He stopped dead. Two men were hefting that box down the hall and into the elevator. There she was, standing in the doorway. He felt like he had been punched in the stomach. But she only looked at him for a moment, a smile on her lips, those eyes just....he clenched his jaw. Then she went inside and closed the door. He stood there for a moment, frozen, an avalanche of emotion suddenly released. Gradually he got himself under control, calmed his heart, and made himself take one step. Then another. He came to her door and stopped. He looked at it, imagined he could see her behind it, could smell her. He waited for a moment, listening, and then walked on. It was the hardest thing at that very moment, to make that one leg move, then the other, until he was at the elevator.

He waited for a little bit. He didn't want to see the box being man-handled across the lobby or out in the street. Once he got down below, he went outside and just started running, an easy pace that he could maintain for a long time, breath deep but regular. His body would pump along, a machine, using his energy, releasing endorphins, calming him. He could think without feeling lost or overwhelmed.

It did mean something that she had gotten rid of it. He knew that. He wasn't oblivious. But how long would it last? Who was she, really? Part of him felt like he'd known her forever. But she was a stranger. Clearly she was a stranger. What had he been thinking? He hadn't even known her name. And while he believed her emotion was real- he knew it was- she also had been able to kill people and not feel a twinge of conscience. You don't know that, Connor. You don't know why she got into that line of work True. And she'd been military. She'd mentioned that the other day, too. Probably a sniper. What was the difference, really? Well, for one, the government, presumably for the best reasons, needed the job done. But he wasn't stupid. He knew the government made mistakes, could be corrupt. It was entirely possible for a good person to do bad things believing they were right because those they trusted were wrong or corrupt.

If that had been just that, this wouldn't have been an issue. Or at least not much of one. But she killed for money. The people who hired out that kind of work were not good. A good person doesn't pay someone to kill someone else. So she worked for bad people. Good. Bad. He sounded like he was 5. But he had his personal moral code. And while there were always grey areas, he thought that in general, that was a pretty inarguable rule. Now maybe he was wrong. Maybe the good guys sometimes hired out for a assassins. What did he know? But he could only judge the situation based on what he knew.

Her family, though. She'd had a family and had been forced to work to protect them. Wasn't that a kind of goodness? What if it had been Hayden being held, and he told to kill. Would he do it? In all honesty, he just didn't know, couldn't know. He didn't know anything, really.

Except that he was scared, terrified to trust this woman. He wanted to, desperately. But what if, even with the best of intentions, she couldn't make that change. What if she discovered it was part of her, who she was. What if she resented him, or realized that she didn't want to be with him and abandoned him. His heart flinched at even imagining going through that again. The scars from the first time had been so very deep. He still carried them. He couldn't risk it. Not with a woman like that. Not when the potential agony was so great.

So what do you do? Do you go back to being alone? Do you resign yourself to just being by yourself for the rest of your life? He didn't want to meet anyone new. After Ayden, how they had clicked, after the experiencing the ease and natural connection that they had, well, you didn't find that very often. It felt like something died inside him. Hope. Hope for the future.

Then he thought of Hayden. I promised to live. But how could he live like this? He felt trapped, lost. He could move. But even as his heart was to afraid to go back to her, the thought of never seeing her again scared him too.

On and on he ran. He didn't know what he was going to do.

Continued in Gracie's Gym


Edited by Connor Kent, Jun 20 2014, 08:48 AM.