Chapter Text
At first, and for a long time, it was a standard job. He followed his target, keeping himself hidden from her. He didn’t make contact because the man who had hired him – her father – had not told him to do so. He was just a sort-of, sometimes bodyguard.
Any other man with his skills would have thought the job beneath him. Any other man would have stayed a few days, tailing the girl, making sure she was safe, and then moved on. Not him. This girl was an orphan because he’d failed to do his job properly. He would have to live with that for the rest of his life, and so would she. So he stuck with her, watching patiently, protecting from afar. Doing his job.
Eventually, though, something changed. Maybe he got restless, or bored, or he let his guard down. Maybe it was a simple mistake, or maybe it was a subconscious need to have a little thrill in his life. The role of honorable ninja could only go on so long. Eventually, though, he was seen, and it was not so standard after that.
She was a young Army intelligence officer, working hard in some general’s office. She’d been called a stellar up-and-comer, real go-getter type. He’d eavesdropped on select, private conversations that could have been well beyond his security clearance, if he’d had one. Sometimes, he sank deep into daydreams of what it would be like to tell her all the good things that were said behind her back, watching her face light up and her pale cheeks redden. He wanted to see her smile and laugh, because for the years that he kept tabs on her, he didn’t often get to see that.
The night things changed was a warm night in June, warm at least for Washington D.C. as a heat-wave had choked the capital city for almost a week. She was walking back to her apartment where she lived alone. She was in civvies, a nice pantsuit that accentuated her figure, and sharp, short heels that clacked on the sidewalk. She was walking because her car had broken down that morning, and he had a feeling she thought herself too good for public transportation. He’d never once watched her board a bus or subway.
He hadn’t been with her much lately; in fact, it had been nearly two months since his last check-up. Things with his surrogate cousin had taken a turn, and she’d finally begun to get the hang of the grace that went with the art of ninjutsu. It had been almost a pleasure training her these last few weeks. Therefore, his responsibility to the job had been put on the back-burner. He tried to assuage his guilt by telling himself that she was able to handle herself a lot more since her days in college - he’d watched her abuse punching bags and karate instructors alike long enough to know she at least had a handle on self-defense – but the deeper she went with this whole conspiracy with Cobra, the more he knew she was putting herself in the spotlight against the world’s most dangerous minds and egos.
He was jumping from fire escape to fire escape above her as she walked, keeping pace easily about a hundred feet behind her, his mind not in the game. He was wandering, daydreaming, not paying attention like he should have been. It was a shock, therefore, when he rounded a corner and realized he’d lost her.
This was not the first time she’d accidentally given him the slip, so for a moment he was not worried. Sometimes he just wasn’t good at his job, a shameful fact he hated to admit to himself. He’d just about made up his mind to go the short way to her apartment and make sure she’d made it home safe before calling it a night when a figure materialized next to him.
He reacted with almost split-second reflexes, dodging the punch that was aimed for his face, flipping the attacker over his shoulder and into a heap on the bottom of the rickety fire escape. He went for his own blow but stopped short when he recognized the person beneath him.
Shana O’Hara glared up at him, looking none the worse for wear even though she’d just survived what could have been a lethal attack if he’d put a little more heart into it.
“Who are you and why are you following me?” she asked with a deep, commanding voice that would make her a great general one day, ignoring the fact that she was looking up at him from the ground.
He offered a hand and was mildly surprised when she took it, then pulled her up into a standing position on the fire escape that creaked dangerously. He was in full costume, mask and everything, the red Arashikage symbol almost luminescent against the charcoal of the thermal spandex. He rubbed a closed fist in a circular motion against his breastbone, saying sorry in sign language even though he was pretty sure she didn’t understand.
“Who are you?” she asked in an even more dangerous voice, her eyebrows going low over fiery eyes. She was terrific at being angry.
He placed a hand against his throat and shook his head, then spread his hands out, palms up, trying to signify that he came in peace.
She watched the motions and then raised her head to look into his visor once more. “Why are you following me?”
He hesitated, knowing it wouldn’t be that hard to explain with broken signs that her father, the great inventor, the genius mind of some offshoot of Cobra Industries, had asked him to watch over her in his absence, after he himself had not saved his life. It wouldn’t be hard at all to tell her that, except for the fact that he knew he wouldn’t do it. There was no way he could come clean to this vibrant, sharp-minded young woman about the real reasons over her father’s death, something he knew she had obsessed over since her days as a young college student. He couldn’t tell her that he’d been checking in with her for years now for a few days or a week at a time, following her, making sure that she wasn’t getting into too much trouble. He had no way of explaining, as she’d found her way into the Army and had begun investigating the very company that had led to her father’s death, how devastated he’d been that she was walking into the same trap her father had and he’d been helpless to stop it.
So, as usual, he said nothing.
“You’re going to tell me,” she informed him, telegraphing the punch she was about to throw with the slightest movement in her shoulders. He dodged it just as easily as the first, twisting her arm with his to spin her around and away from him. Then he backed up, holding his hands up, shaking his head. There wasn’t enough room to maneuver as he would have liked in the small fire escape, and it creaked dangerously with each step they took. She made to attack again and he vaulted over the edge, swinging down three stories in a series of gymnastic moves to the pavement of the alley through which she’d taken a shortcut. He looked up to see her attempting the same, bull-headedly thinking she could. He would have shouted at her to stop, but of course, no sound would have come from his destroyed throat.
He watched as her fingers slipped off the rail of the lowermost fire escape as she struggled to recreate the same graceful swings he’d done, and he ran to catch her. She fell ten feet, not making a sound the whole time. He tried to cradle her body as it landed in his arms, knowing to soften the blow of an abrupt stop by swinging his torso down to counteract the force. He helped her straighten to his feet.
He’d won points by saving her a broken leg. She turned her face to him, tugging on the hem of her blazer. “Thank you.”
The ninja nodded. The soldier girl nodded.
“Who are you? If you don’t want me dead, what do you want?”
If he could have, he would have sighed. As it were, he’d long abandoned shows of emotion that couldn’t be hidden by his mask. Behind the visor, his face sometimes reacted as animatedly as an exaggerated cartoon, especially when overcome by strong emotions, but he only let it be this way because he knew no one would know. Outwardly, he was as stoic and silent as a statue. He thought a moment before lifting a hand, his thumb and first two fingers pressed together, scribbling a curvy line in the air.
Her gaze followed the sloppy sign language before turning back up to the fire escape they’d fallen from. “My purse…”
The ninja had it back down to her in a matter of seconds, handing it over gently. She rifled through it and pulled out a small notepad and a pen. He wrote quickly in a surprisingly neat hand before turning it to her.
“Snake Eyes,” she read, her eyebrow quirking. “What’s that?”
He pointed to himself.
“Your name?” She had the grace not to question it. “Okay, next question: why are you following me?”
This one he didn’t answer. He kept that guilt to himself. But it wasn’t as if he couldn’t tell her anything, so he did the next best thing and told as much of the truth as he could.
You’re in danger.
“Why? From whom?”
Cobra.
“I knew it,” she breathed, her green eyes blazing with fire. “I knew they weren’t the all-American company they pretend to be. But how are you involved?”
This, again, led to a tricky slope. He couldn’t tell her why she was in danger from the company her father had worked for, the company he had sabotaged with his device that was going to be used for evil, as Patrick had put it when explaining to Snake Eyes exactly why he was running an axe through all of his hard drives. He couldn’t tell her how he had come to know her, to even care for her from afar, as she had challenged and surpassed all expectations, both his and those of her superiors in the Army.
So, as usual, he said nothing.
“Snake Eyes,” she murmured quietly, “there’s something fishy going on, and I’ve been feeling it for weeks. Someone’s been following me for a while, and I need to know whether it was you, or someone I should be afraid of.”
So she wasn’t afraid of him. That much was obvious, after all, since she was standing in a dark alley near midnight with him, having a conversation as casually as if they were in a local coffee shop. But the fact that she was revealing this to him was as eye-opening as it was worrying. He had not seen a trace of a tail on her since he’d first stopped by the night before, so if she did, that meant he was losing his touch, or she was.
He longed for a voice to explain things to her as he scribbled, his handwriting getting messier and messier. How do you know? What have you seen? Has someone come to your apartment?
“I just know,” she said, reading his notes as he wrote them. “Nothing, really, but I’ve been getting bad feelings lately. Someone ducking just out of sight, the same few black cars behind me in traffic, that sort of- How do you know I live in an apartment?”
Feeling perverted, he wrote, I’ve been following you too. Sorry, had to. Cobra is after you and I needed to make sure you’re safe. I’m not a bad guy.
Shana snickered at the last phrase, the severity of the situation not tempered by the cartoonish description of someone who could potentially be a murderer. “I’m sure,” she said derisively, giving his outfit an exaggerated up-and-down. She sobered quickly, looking into his visor, right where his eyes were. That spooked him a bit. Most people he came face-to-face with seemed to focus in around his nostrils, if they looked at his face at all. She gave him a feeling like she could see straight through the mask. “Why are you involved? Why do you care?”
I can’t tell you, he moaned inside his head, sounding exactly as his voice had sounded. To this day, he had not forgotten the sound of his voice, the feeling of his vocal chords vibrating in his throat. He’d liked his voice. He’d been a pretty good singer.
I just am. It’s my job to protect people. You are in trouble and I wanted
The train of thought derailed, and he regretted his words instantly. They made him sound like a sap who didn’t have control of himself or his emotions. If only he could take them back by backtracking, clearing his throat to drown out his words, even laughing and saying, ‘Just kidding’. But there was no erasing the pen marks.
She read them as he wrote and was quiet for an infinite threebeat. “To help,” she finished for him eventually, looking up into his eyes again. He wanted to take off the visor and reward her with his true gaze, such was the persistence of her own, but there wasn’t time for that. He placed a hand on her shoulder and lowered his chin.
“So what do we do?” Shana asked.
That was exactly what he wanted to hear.