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When Ch’en took on this job, she can safely say she had never expected it to lead right back to her old one.
She tightens her grip around Chi Xiao’s handle to keep herself calm, though it just barely works. It’s not like her job now is smooth sailing—she’s had to kill more people in the past year than she thought she ever would in her whole life, and the amount of blood had made her sick the first few times. But if she had to compare being the hired assassin she is now to the special cop she was before, Ch’en can say with full certainty that it’s a step up.
It was simple: if being police couldn’t exact the right kind of justice the world needed, she would just have to step out of the department and do it herself. And she hadn’t been killing regular people; she’d chosen her jobs carefully, targeted corrupt politicians and human traffickers and others like them. It was just like cleaning the city up, person by person, even if she left a bit of a mess with the body more often than not. If she were still police, all she would have been able to do was flounder uselessly while criminals continued to roam free.
There are some parts she misses about it, though. The medical insurance, for one—God knows the amount of times she’s had to patch herself up at home, if only because Ch’en didn’t think she could bear the questions she’d undoubtedly be asked if she went to a hospital instead—and the company, for another, though she’d never admit that. This job is a much more solitary affair compared to the police force, and while Ch’en prefers the peace and quiet on some days, she finds herself missing the chatter and noise on others.
Now she half-regrets admitting that, because it feels like the universe conspired against her to do this. Oh, you miss your old friends? it had probably said. No problem! We’ll just force you to go back to them. And, okay, technically no one forced Ch’en to take on this job, technically she could have just walked away from it when she saw the bounty on the assassin board, but. Well. She’s not sure she would’ve been able to live with herself if she had ignored the job.
So that leads her to where she is right now: standing in the courtyard of Swire’s manor in the middle of the night, staring at the wall, wondering just where she went wrong in life.
Ch’en sighs and paces the length between the courtyard and the manor wall, her steps silent even on the trimmed grass. She shouldn’t be doing this. Professional killers like her can’t let their emotions get in the way of the job, because then nothing would ever get done. But when Ch’en had seen Swire’s name on the board… well, had there really been any other option?
She shakes her head. What’s done is done, so focus on the present. Ch’en had gone all the way out here tonight because, after much stealth work she can safely say she is not cut out for, she’d discovered a small group of fellow assassins had planned for this night to be when they would head in Swire’s manor and off her, put simply. It says a lot about the bounty on Swire’s head that even the greediest of mercenaries would be fine with sharing it with others. Amateur as they are, it won’t be easy to take them on if they outnumber her, because then one of them might slip past and get to Swire while Ch’en is occupied. The best method here would be to stand guard outside Swire’s room, but then that could still easily lead to someone entering through her bedroom window…
Ah, hell. Ch’en takes a deep breath, clearing her head of unnecessary thoughts, and starts scaling the wall.
One advantage to having been friends with this specific bounty target for the past how many years of her life: Ch’en knows exactly how to unlatch Swire’s bedroom window from outside, with only one hand, and completely soundlessly. She nudges it open, then swings inside with only the faintest of thumps when she lands on the floor.
It’s dark, but the moonlight tells Ch’en not much has changed since the last time she was here: still the same cluttered vanity Swire has sat Ch’en down before dozens of times before, the same plush armchairs and scattered beanbags Ch’en has dozed off in more than once, the same large bed Ch’en has shared with its owner many a night, when they were still too young to care about personal space. When was the last time she was here? Has it already been a year since then? She’s been too busy with work to really keep up with anyone these days…
Something shuffles. Ch’en blinks.
“What… the… aauugh!” a too-familiar voice screeches, loud enough to throw the roof off this house—Ch’en jolts backwards and stumbles right into a bookshelf that threatens to topple over her. “A-A-Ah Ch’en!? What the hell?”
“Oh,” Ch’en says, disappointed. “You woke up?”
Swire, dressed in pajamas and her long blonde hair a wild bedhead mess, sits up just to stare at her from her bed, blanket raised up to her chest. “What. The hell,” she groans, “are you doing here? Oh, my God! I wake up to use the bathroom and see someone standing over me in bed, I thought I was going to die!”
“Yeah, about that,” Ch’en says. “You should be thankful.”
Swire gives her a look that tells Ch’en she’s wondering if her intelligence has severely deteriorated over the past several months. “Thankful. Me. For, uh, what? You scaring the living daylights out of me? Ugh, okay, hold on, whatever you’re here for can wait,” Swire huffs, pushing the blanket off of her and hopping off the bed. “I still need to use the bathroom. God, if you weren’t Ah Ch’en and some assassin out for my head instead, I swear—”
“Wait—” Ch’en grabs Swire’s arm and yanks her back, maybe a little too forcefully, because Swire yelps, trips on some random object on the floor, and nearly falls flat on her face. “You can’t go out yet,” Ch’en hisses, steadying Swire and pushing her back to her bed. “Wait here.”
“What? Why can’t I leave my own room—”
“Just stay put and listen to me—”
“Well, I’ll need a decent explanation before that—” Swire’s eyes widen in what looks like realization. Ch’en’s hopes that she figured out her own situation are instantly crushed when she squawks, “No way! Are you actually here to kill me after all!? Ah Ch’en! I thought we had something!”
Ch’en massages her temple. Why, why, why did she think this would be a good idea? Things would have gone so much smoother if she had just stood guard outside Swire’s room, entrance via window be damned. “I’m not going to kill you,” she says, slowly, enunciating each syllable as if talking to a small child, “but if you don’t stay quiet and listen, someone else might.”
Swire frowns. To her credit, her next words are spoken softly. “What do you…”
But then Ch’en hears it: footsteps, faint but audible, coming from down the hall outside.
Her first thought is the window, but considering how Swire still looks confused, it’ll take too long to get her out safely without spraining an ankle at best and breaking a leg at worse. Ch’en hardly even needs to scan the room to know where exactly to push Swire towards. “Stay here and don’t make a sound,” she says, above Swire’s startled yelps.
“Hey, wait,” Swire squeaks, but Ch’en doesn’t waste another second before shoving her in her closet.
She shuts the closet not a moment too late—when she turns around, the trio of mercenaries are already kicking the room door down. Well, they’re certainly trying their best, but they can’t seem to knock it off its hinges, so eventually the door just swings open normally. “Don’t move!” the first mercenary barks, pointing his gun at Ch’en’s face. Ch’en, for her part, can only blink down its barrel and wonder if she’s supposed to feel threatened right now. “If you give up now, we’ll be nice and make it… quick… huh? Wait a sec, you don’t look like the mark…”
Ch’en draws her sword. “No, I don’t.”
It’s hard using her sword in an enclosed space like this, but it’s also significantly easier to keep all three men within her sights, even in the darkness—and it doesn’t look like they had been expecting to come across anyone wielding a sword in this day and age. The fact that they’re all clearly inexperienced only makes things easier. She slices open one’s throat and another’s chest, and the only reason she can’t reach the last one’s kneecaps is because they’d scrambled backwards in a wise, if futile, attempt to avoid her blade. “Come here,” Ch’en says, pulling her sword out from where she’d driven it into one of the men’s hearts to ensure the job was done. “Give up now and it’ll be quick.”
“D… Don’t mock us!” the man shouts, waving his gun around like it’ll help. Briefly, Ch’en hopes he doesn’t actually shoot—even the tiniest scratch anywhere in this house would be property damage she could probably only dream of paying for. “Why are you here anyway? Aren’t you a part of the agency too? What do you think you’re doing, just k-killing us like this!?”
Ch’en only adjusts her grip on her sword. “You talk too much.” She moves in, crossing the length of the room, grabs the man’s gun before he can use it and—
Thunk.
Ch’en skids to a halt, her thoughts running blank.
What… Something just hit her in the back of her head. Right? She hadn’t imagined that. Judging by the boggled expression on the man’s face, he’d definitely seen it too. Only—Ch’en had killed his other companions. Hadn’t she? She had. She’s sure of it. No one can possibly survive a sword to the throat and heart. So who had thrown… whatever the object that hit her was?
Ch’en turns around. It’s probably a stupid decision considering she’s turning her back on someone who wants to kill her, but she turns around anyway. Peeking out from inside the closet is Swire, hair falling in her face, blinking her big green eyes, and holding another hairbrush in hand.
“Uh,” Swire says. “Oops… sorry?”
Ch’en can almost hear the little switch in her head flipping from “kill maim slaughter” mode to “beat Swire up” mode. “I told you to stay in there!” she hisses, tightening her hold on the man’s gun and keeping it firmly pointed upwards in case he gets any ideas. It doesn’t look like she needed to, though, because he can’t seem to so much as budge her wrist. “Get back in, Swire, I swear—”
“Hey, you can’t just shove me in my own freakin’ closet and expect me to not ask questions!” Swire retorts, waving her hairbrush around. Ch’en feels close to passing out. “Imagine if you were me and I pushed you in your wardrobe. How would you feel, huh? Huh?”
“Now is not the time—”
“It is so the time! Why are there dead bodies in my bedroom!? When I said I wanted to redecorate a little, this is not what I meant!”
“I was counting on you—” Ch’en twists the man’s arm when he drops the gun and tries to fish around for a knife, then plunges her sword into his throat—“to trust me, and also to trust your instincts, because usually when people hear fighting in their room—” She pulls her sword out, and the corpse slumps down onto the floor to join the other two—“they don’t want to let themselves be seen!”
Swire blinks down at the new dead body on her floor. “Well, this is just great,” she says, at length. “Gonna have to pay the staff extra so they don’t ask about the blood. So, oh smelly high-and-mighty dragon, may I please get out of my closet and use the bathroom now?”
By the time Swire returns from the restroom, Ch’en has finished pushing the corpses out of the window and onto the courtyard below, where it’ll be easier to drag and bury them somewhere (or perhaps send them back to the agency, to serve as a warning for anyone else eyeing the bounty on Swire’s head). “So,” Swire says, drying her hands on her pajamas, “that happened, huh.”
Ch’en nods. “There shouldn’t be anyone else now. My job here is done.”
“What? Wait—wait, wait, wait!” Swire yelps, rushing forward to grab onto the back of Ch’en’s coat and consequently almost yanking her off the windowsill entirely. “Don’t just go! How the heck are we done talking about this?”
“I have nothing else to do here.” Ch’en brushes Swire’s hands off and swings one leg out the window once more.
“Ah Ch’en, you’re driving me up the wall here—stay still, at least explain why my room is now a crime scene!”
Ch’en groans and lets Swire bodily pull her off the windowsill. There are still puddles of blood on the floor, some of them already beginning to dry or spreading underneath dressers and cabinets, which will probably be a pain to clean for the housekeep. “What’s there that needs explaining?” she asks, once Swire seems to confirm she’s not about to go climbing out windows again and takes a tentative seat on the edge of her bed. “People are trying to kill you. Seems simple to me.”
Swire gawks at her. “Well. I mean, I guess. Would it kill you to elaborate a little, though?”
Ch’en crosses her arms and leans against the wall with a sigh. Even though it feels like it’s been a while since she and Swire have last seen each other, it… also doesn’t feel like anything has changed between them. She can’t tell if that’s a good or a bad thing either. “You have a bounty on your head. The client’s someone your grandfather wronged, something about business. So I came here to protect you.”
Swire stares at her. “Wow. That sure is ‘a little,’ huh.”
“What do you want from me, an essay?”
“If it’ll answer my questions, sure! Like, how do you even know about this? Didn’t you say your new job was just about investing in stuff? I thought it made sense, ‘cause your uncle’s a big-shot in the city, but I never knew the stock market also dealt with assassinations!”
“Hm…” Ch’en scratches her cheek. “I didn’t think you really believed that.”
Swire looks like she truly and genuinely cannot believe what she is hearing right now. “Okay, you know what?” she sighs. “It’s way too late to be talking about this, and at this rate other people are gonna wake up from all the noise, if they haven’t already. Let’s talk about this tomorrow—and you better explain it all better, okay?”
“Works for me.” Ch’en grabs onto the windowsill once more.
“For the love of—” Swire leaps up from her bed to wrap her arms around Ch’en’s torso, pulling the both of them down onto the floor. It doesn’t particularly hurt, but for some reason Ch’en’s head goes blank once again, like a machine with its plug abruptly pulled out. “Where are you going in the middle of the night? Just sleep here, there’s a guest room, like, right there. You can borrow my old clothes for pajamas too!”
Ch’en blinks dizzily up at the ceiling. “I don’t—”
“Don’t be difficult just this once, alright?” Swire extricates herself from underneath Ch’en, moving to stand above her with her hands on her hips. Ch’en blinks again, wondering if perhaps her eyesight has begun to fail her. “Take this as thanks for saving my life! Or, uh, as apology for… almost getting you killed? Didn’t know hairbrushes would be so lethal.” She rubs the back of her head sheepishly.
“I wouldn’t have died,” Ch’en informs her.
Swire just rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Now go! I’ll get you some clothes in a second. You should shower first too, you’re covered in blood.”
Too dazed to argue, Ch’en trudges out of the room and heads into the bathroom at the end of the hallway, the manor’s layout still painfully familiar that she can navigate this place with her eyes closed. Maybe it’s just because it’s been a while, but Swire’s arms around her had done very awful things to her brain, such as simultaneously shut it down and make it run on overdrive, which Ch’en hadn’t even known was possible. And it isn’t as if sleepovers are uncommon for either of them, goodness knows how many times they’ve stayed the night at each other’s houses when they were young, but that was when they were children.
Ch’en worries on her lower lip. They used to be small enough to share a bed too. Even today, Swire’s bed is large enough to easily hold two grown women. But she’d sent her off to the guest room instead, and… well, Ch’en’s not sure she wouldn’t have done the same thing in her place. It’s the logical thing to do, after all.
Still, is it bad that a part of Ch’en wishes Swire had let her sleep with her in her room instead?
Ch’en likes to think she knows everything there is to know about Swire, considering how it often feels like they used to spend more time together than without. She knows Swire’s favorite makeup brand, favorite restaurant, favorite leather jacket to pair with her favorite pair of heeled boots. She knows how Swire’s emerald eyes remind her of springtime when the sunlight hits her face just right, how Swire’s soft palms feel on her face whenever she relents and has Swire do her makeup for her, how Swire’s voice gets all quiet and tender when she’s trying to talk about something difficult for her. Ch’en knows Swire, and if told to un-know her, Ch’en thinks she would rather run headlong into death.
But above everything else, there’s definitely one thing Ch’en is sure about: that Swire can really, seriously, honestly be a big fucking idiot sometimes.
“What do you mean it’s ‘fine?’” Ch’en nearly shouts. It’s hard to look serious when she’s trying to stuff bites of pancake in her mouth in between words, but it doesn’t stop her from trying. “People are trying to kill you. It is not fine!”
Swire sighs. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this—”
Ch’en makes an unintelligible noise that, she imagines, is what a row of question marks would sound like.
“—but seriously, it can’t be that bad, right? I mean, you took out the guys who tried to kill me, so can there really be more coming after them?” Swire brightens. “By the way, thanks for your help last night! Think I forgot to say that. How much money do you want? I’ll wire it to your account soon as I—”
This is impossible. Ch’en stands up and slams a hand down on the dining table, cutting Swire off and making the plates and utensils rattle nervously. “I don’t need money,” she grinds out. “I didn’t take this job to earn cash. I took it for you.”
For some reason, Swire’s face goes red all the way to the tips of her ears. “T-That—well—well—no, wait, first of all,” she stammers, jumping to her feet as well, “why didn’t you tell me about your new job after you quit the police? Did you think I was going to lecture you about it or something? Assassin or… or waitress, or garbage collector, whatever, I would’ve appreciated a bit of honesty from you!”
Ch’en scowls. “Did it maybe occur to you that I didn’t want you—” to find out, to think I’m some cold-blooded murderer, to not want to be friends with me anymore—“to poke your nose in my business? Ugh! I give up. Go get yourself killed, see if I care.”
“What? No, hey, wait—Ah Ch’en, hold on!”
But Ch’en has already turned to leave, and she knows the quickest route from the dining room to the front door. A part of her knows she shouldn’t be doing this, that she’s just being difficult and leaving now is putting the both of them in danger, but the rest of her shoves that part down and focuses on getting out of here as fast as possible. Swire had gone a whole year barely seeing her and stayed alive; surely she can go a few damn days without getting in trouble.
She regrets not taking her breakfast with her, though. Her stomach is still rumbling, and there had definitely still been at least three bites worth of pancake left on her plate, but she figures it’s too late to turn back now.
Okay. That was stupid.
Ch’en probably should have known she wouldn’t have been able to stay mad at Swire for forever. When they were younger, they bickered and made up within the same hour; when Ch’en was still in the police force, they argued and bought each other food within the same day. Ch’en’s not sure why she thought this would be any different, especially when it’s been almost a week now and the only thing she can think about is if Swire is safe.
Swire has always known how to get to her easiest, considering how they’ve known each other since they were children, but Ch’en will admit her temper normally isn’t that short. Maybe because she’s been busy with work and hardly has much time to socialize in between killing, washing blood off her clothes, and more killing, but… fine, she probably shouldn’t have blown up at Swire like she did after they met up for the first time in ages. It was a petty fight, really, that much Ch’en can acknowledge even at the cost of her pride. So, after much mulling over her next course of action, Ch’en decides there can be no better way to apologize than to bring Swire out for one of her favorite things: a meal.
Of course, Ch’en just has to find a sniper hiding in Swire’s courtyard as soon as she steps inside.
Ch’en wishes her troubles ended there after she makes quick work of the guy—by that she means she cuts his head off—but unfortunately, they don’t. She races to the front door to tell Swire about it, only to almost trip not on the steps but on a very dead body lying on the ground, who Ch’en recognizes as one of Swire’s bodyguards.
As it turns out, Swire definitely cannot go a few days without getting in trouble.
At least Ch’en had thought to bring her sword. She steps over the corpse on the threshold and immediately runs into someone clad in all-black by the nearest staircase; Ch’en does away with them via blade to the neck, then heads up the stairs, following the muddy footprints on the tiles. She finds a thief trying to lug several antiques out of Swire’s storage room and drop-kicks them out a window to break their neck on the fall below, then another assassin in the second floor hallway, struggling to reload their gun; Ch’en takes it from them, loads it, and shoots them in the head.
Locating Swire, of course, isn’t hard—Ch’en just has to follow all the shouting, which happens to be in the second floor lobby.
She finds the bounty target herself hanging off a chandelier, likely more expensive than everything in Ch’en’s apartment put together, and throwing various items from her handbag down at some poor guy who appears to have run out of ammo for his gun and is trying (and failing) to throw his knife up at her. The sight is so ridiculous, Ch’en can only stare blankly at the scene before her for a moment.
“Stay down, damn it!” Swire’s yelling, flinging what looks like a tube of lipstick down at her would-be killer. “I’ve had enough of you assholes—” She throws a perfume bottle—“breaking into my house—” a heavy ring of keys—“messing the place up—” a handheld humidifier—“and getting blood everywhere!”
The last thing she throws—a metal tumbler—sails through the air and smacks into the man’s head, knocking him out cold. Ch’en steps over and jabs her sword between his shoulder blades to finish it off before Swire can run out of projectiles. “It’s over. Come down.”
“Wha—Ah Ch’en! When’d you get here? And no way am I coming down,” Swire whines. The chandelier sways dangerously as she adjusts her hold on it. “There’s still, like, two other people trying to kill me in this house! Or was it three? I can’t remember. But I swear, if I come down now, they’re going to try to shoot my head off, I just know it!”
Ch’en sighs. “It’s fine. I got them all.”
Swire blinks. “What?”
“There was a sniper and a thief and another guy like him,” Ch’en enumerates, nudging the corpse with the toe of her shoe, “and I got them all. Is that everyone you mentioned? Either way, it’s safe now.”
Swire narrows her eyes. “I… You can’t be sure about that, can you? The place is kinda big. What if they called for backup?”
“Swire.”
“What if there were others with them who were waiting outside and they’re gonna come in any minute now ‘cause their buddies aren’t back—”
“Swire. I said I got them all.”
Swire just groans. “Fine, let’s say you did! I can’t just jump down from here, I’ll break a leg!”
“How did you even get up—” Ch’en shakes her head. This is starting to remind her an awful lot of cats climbing up trees and then getting too scared to come back down. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. You can jump and I’ll catch you, so will you come down now before that chandelier makes you.”
Swire warily eyes the chain holding the chandelier to the ceiling. “Uh. I don’t know, Ah Ch’en, can you really catch me? It’s kind of a long fall… I think I’d rather take my chances with the—”
Ch’en picks up the lipstick Swire had thrown earlier and tosses it back up at her. Swire yelps, scrambles to avoid getting smacked in the face with her own makeup product, and ends up losing her grip on the chandelier and hurtling down from the ceiling with a terrified shriek. It hardly takes any effort at all to stand directly beneath her and catch Swire safely in her arms. Ch’en feels that vaguely familiar feeling run through her body again—the same peculiar sensation she’d felt when Swire had hugged her from behind, if you could even call that a hug—but now she’s a little more prepared for it and doesn’t blank out like last time.
It helps that Swire is still screaming even when she’s already safely nestled in Ch’en’s arms, because the noise not unlike a blaring siren just gives Ch’en a headache rather than butterflies in her stomach or whatever. “Miss S, you’re safe already, so can you please shut up.”
“Ahhh… ah? Huh?” Swire blinks, looking right up into Ch’en’s face. Her eyes are even greener up close, and Ch’en thinks someone as pretty as Swire wouldn’t look so out of place in a garden. “Oh. Whoa, what the heck, you really caught me? Dang, would you have been able to do this if you were still in the police force? This job sure is teaching you a whole bunch of tricks! Do you go around catching other girls like this everyday?”
Ch’en drops Swire on the floor of her own house. “Sorry. My hand slipped.”
“You smelly shameless dragon—”
“Have assassins been trying to kill you on a daily basis? You sound almost used to them now, by the way you were talking to that guy.”
Swire grumbles and picks herself up off the floor, rubbing her backside. “Yeah, I guess,” she huffs. “They won’t leave me alone! Most of ‘em get caught by the guards since they’re on high alert now and all, but the ones that get past are such a bother. I broke my hair dryer the other day because I had to use it to stop a bullet! Do you have any idea how much of a waste that is? And I can’t even go out to replace it, or any of the other stuff the idiots have broken, because then they’ll try to shoot me if I put one toe out of the house!”
Ch’en waits for Swire to catch her breath after her little monologue before speaking again. “Right. Anyway, if this is such a problem—”
“No, I’m not done yet!” Swire jabs an accusatory finger in Ch’en’s chest. “What the heck are you even doing here? I thought you wanted nothing to do with me after last time! You were like, ‘oooh, you wanna get killed so bad’ and all!”
“Right,” Ch’en repeats. She was hoping Swire wouldn’t bring that up, but now that she has, Ch’en supposes she may as well make use of the opening while she can. “About that. You haven’t had lunch yet, have you, Miss S? Looked a little too busy here to sit down and eat.”
Swire’s eye twitches. “Quit calling me that. But no, I haven’t.”
“Good. Then let’s go.” And Ch’en turns on her heel to head for the stairs.
“What? Wait! Go where?”
Swire clings to Ch’en the whole walk outside, half out of paranoia that there’s a killer in disguise around every street corner and half just to piss Ch’en off, but she seems to forget everything as soon as they arrive at the restaurant. “Ahaaa, so you were planning on this all along, I see,” Swire purrs, staring at the menu in delight. “Well, I gotta say, it’s not exactly a new idea, but don’t fix what isn’t broken and all!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ch’en wonders why Swire even bothers looking at the menu anymore, considering she always just gets the same steak, tomato, and egg burger in the end.
There are, thankfully, no assassins lying in wait around here, at least. Ch’en idly watches Swire dig into her food for a few minutes before deciding she’s waited long enough. “We can’t just let this go on,” she starts, which is a fairly good beginning to a conversation, if she says so herself.
Swire doesn’t seem to agree, if the unimpressed look she gives Ch’en is any indication. “I’m trying to avoid reality for a second here.”
“I checked the board earlier. Your bounty’s tripled. At this rate, more people are just going to try to kill you unless we do something about it,” Ch’en continues, deciding the best way to go about this is to pretend Swire had nodded and gestured for her to go on. “Since we can’t possibly eliminate every single person who’s out for your head, and you can’t possibly run away forever, it’ll be easier to go for the person who set the bounty on you instead. And don’t say we don’t have to do this because things will be fine,” Ch’en adds, sharply, when Swire opens her mouth. “They aren’t. They won’t be.”
“Ugh, I get it, I get it.” Swire shakes her head. “Fine, you were right, okay? I didn’t expect a bunch of professional killers flooding my house after you left, and thanks for coming back. But are you serious about offing your, uh, your client? Doesn’t that go against your job protocol? It sounds like it does.”
“I don’t recall reading that in the terms and services, no.”
“You guys have terms and services too?”
Ch’en mulls on the thought. It’s honestly been so long, she can’t really remember if there had been something like that. She vaguely recalls an instruction manual, though, mostly because that was where she learned how best to wash blood off clothes. “Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can just find a new job.”
“Still!” Swire insists. “What if you get hurt? If this guy’s got enough cash to keep ramping up my bounty… wow, never thought I’d say that in my life. My own bounty. Ahem, if this guy’s as rich as he must be, then isn’t he bound to have a bunch of bodyguards? You can’t take ‘em all on your own! I mean, I’ll help, of course, but there’s no way we can break through by ourselves, can we? And what if it doesn’t work out? What if he doesn’t need to even be alive to hand the money out, like, if he’s got a butler to go up to whoever murders me and give them a briefcase full of cash like in the movies—”
This is tiring. Ch’en reaches across their table and shoves Swire’s burger in her mouth, cutting off whatever else she might have said and replacing it with an undignified, “Mmrph!”
“I don’t care if it’s dangerous,” Ch’en says. She tries to keep her tone serious, and she succeeds for the most part. A sliver of something else slips in, an emotion she recognizes but can’t place the name of, and her voice turns just the strangest bit tender. “If it’s to keep you safe, I’ll do it.”
Swire stares at her. Her cheeks go a fascinating shade of red that, in Ch’en’s opinion, suits her far better than any of her makeup blushes. “Seriously,” she mutters, “you’re so…”
But she never finishes that sentence, just stuffs her face with her burger and munches away instead.
They return to their respective places to make the necessary preparations: in addition to her sword, Ch’en loads up on a few guns and knives as well. Normally her sword is all she needs to take care of a job, but she’s never tried to kill her client before, so it’s probably better to be safe than sorry. She pulls on her coat, makes a few calls, then dawdles in her apartment waiting for nightfall.
She’s never been much of a decorator, but the inside of this place feels empty, even for her, and she’s been living in here for the better part of a year. Ch’en pauses next to her kitchen door, looking inside to see the counter and the cabinets where she mostly keeps canned food in. She has no real attachment to this place, which is good, because in her line of work she has to be able to run anytime, anywhere, and at least she knows there’s nothing important enough in here to come back to in an emergency.
But that also means she can leave this place and find somewhere else to live. After this job, if the agency decides Ch’en has no place as an assassin among their ranks, maybe she could…
No, these are dangerous thoughts. Ch’en shakes her head and makes herself a cup of instant noodles for dinner, even as the little voices in her mind remind her of how Swire had invited for them to live together, more than once.
They meet up to carry out their plan in the evening, but despite how they’re supposed to be going on an undercover mission, Ch’en has to admit it just feels like they’re going on… well, an outing. The city is still busy and bustling at night, with flickering street lamps and flashing billboard advertisements providing more light than the moon and steady streams of people at every intersection, forcing them to stick close together to avoid being separated. Swire even stops by a food stand, ignoring Ch’en’s protests, and hands her a stick of fin balls. “Come on, lighten up! We gotta eat if we want to do well later,” Swire says.
Ch’en sighs and figures refusing the food now would just be a waste of money. “Thanks,” she mutters, taking the stick and trying one of the fin balls. It’s the divine epitome of greasy street food.
“It’s been a while since we got together like this,” Swire chirps, popping her own share in her mouth. “You’re always busy with work and stuff ever since you left the force. Sheesh, now I know why. You being busy 24/7 would’ve been a lot more believable if you had just told me you were a professional killer rather than, I don’t know, dabbling in the stock market.”
“Mm.” Ch’en’s tempted to close her eyes and let Swire’s chatter wash over her. Sure, Ch’en’s mentioned dozens of times before that Swire’s voice grates on her ears… but is it weird to like the specific way someone’s voice grates on her ears?
Swire pauses for a moment to squint at her. “You know, I didn’t think you’d go this far for me just ‘cause I’m in a bit of a pickle.”
“…People are trying to kill you, so can you not make it sound like you just need to borrow spare change?”
Like Swire hadn’t heard a word Ch’en just said, she laughs and says, “Wait, I get it! Could it be because you realized you’ve liked me all along while you were out there killing people and stuff? They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, after all!”
“Huh?” Ch’en frowns, feeling genuinely confused. “Yeah, of course I like you.”
Why is Swire even asking this like it’s a joke? They argue often, they have their differences, sometimes they straight up can’t stand each other, but there’s comfort in the fact that there will always be apologies and resolutions after every argument, even if the apology is rarely verbal. There’s something about Swire that Ch’en would never be able to find in anyone else, something about Swire that has Ch’en knowing no one will ever be able to take her place.
If Ch’en feels genuinely confused, Swire looks genuinely shocked. “Eh… ah… what?”
Ch’en has half a mind to ask if Swire is feeling sick, because she sure is acting odd right now, but decides against it. “Never mind that, let’s hurry up,” she says instead, finishing off the last of her fin balls and savoring the taste before it fades. “Come on, we’re wasting precious time here.”
“But… damn it, you are so weird,” Swire whines, and hurries to keep up.
The plan is simple: Ch’en had called up the client who placed a bounty on Swire’s head and asked him to see her at his company building, under the guise of needing to tell him something important about the job. Under other circumstances, the plan would probably have been painfully transparent, but for once Ch’en’s glad for the reputation she’s built up as a trustworthy assassin who always gets the job done, because the man had readily agreed. This late at night, everyone else in the office would have gone home, leaving only the man and possibly a handful of bodyguards to easily take care of.
Or, of course, it could all go horribly wrong, just like everything else in Ch’en’s life.
Through the glass walls, the building lobby is deceptively deserted, and Ch’en leads the way in with a hand on her sword with Swire trailing behind her, clinging to the end of her coat. “Looks clear,” Ch’en eventually decides, despite the odd tingling sense of danger in her head. Something’s not right, but then again that could mean a multitude of things, most of them unrelated to the mission and related to Swire’s breath on the back of her neck. “But stay close. It’s still dangerous.”
“D-Don’t worry about me, Ah Ch’en!” Swire stammers. She sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself. “I’ll have you know, I really prepared this time. I can take care of myself no problem!”
“Prepared? What did you do?” All Ch’en had really noticed about Swire earlier was her change of clothes and not much else. Did she retouch her makeup or something?
Swire draws herself up, looking ready to answer, only for a bullet to zip by.
Ch’en shoves Swire down to the floor without another thought, drawing one of her guns to fire in the general direction the bullet had come from. There’s a groan, and then the sound of a body dropping to the ground; when Ch’en squints in the darkness, she can just barely see the vague outline of some lump by the stairs of the fire escape, which must be whoever had tried, stupidly, to lodge a bullet in Swire’s head. “Oh, shit!” Swire squeaks, and Ch’en has to give it to her for managing to keep her voice down despite the clear panic on her face. “W-What was that? I thought it was all clear!”
“So did I,” Ch’en bites out. Footsteps—more of them are coming down from the stairs. Technically she wasn’t wrong, Ch’en thinks; it was all-clear in the lobby. Not even she can account for anyone upstairs in hiding. “We should go.”
“No shit, it sounds like there’s a party up there. H-Haha, always wanted to have such a big reception to welcome me…”
“Stop screwing around.” Ch’en pulls Swire up, but the place is too dark and too unfamiliar; by the time Ch’en spots the elevators, more hired killers—some of them Ch’en even recognizes from the agency—are swarming the lobby, from behind the reception counter to swinging from the ceiling to straight-up barging through the front doors.
Well, this is bad. Gunshots echo in the hall, and Ch’en drags Swire over to the general direction of the elevators, firing her own gun blindly behind her and throwing it at the nearest person’s head when she runs out of ammo. “This can’t be real! How the hell did that guy manage to hire this many lackeys?” Swire yelps, tripping over a gap between tiles and flailing to keep herself upright. Somehow a bullet whizzes past where her head had been not two seconds ago before she straightens back up.
“Guess the bounty on your head is enough for even this many people to share.” Ch’en takes out her other gun to pick off the nearest men, leaving Swire to press the buttons on the elevator behind her. Ch’en chances a glance at the floor indicator, and winces when the momentary distraction is enough for someone to catch her on her sword arm, the bullet grazing her shoulder—not enough to be serious, but enough to sting like a bitch.
“C-Ch’en!” Swire exclaims. “Are you oka—”
“The elevator!”
“It’s moving, it’s moving!”
Ch’en grabs a nearby potted plant and throws it, gritting her teeth to withstand the ache of her shoulder. It knocks into the one who’d shot at her (presumably—they’re the one standing closest to them, anyway), and they crumple to the floor with a satisfying thump. But another bullet hits, this time far worse than the earlier one; Ch’en bites back what would have been a cry of pain when the bullet tears through her right calf, just barely managing to catch herself on the wall to keep from falling to her knees and probably just making the wound hurt more. She’s had worse, of course, but she had also rarely had them while also trying to protect someone else. There’s still the client himself after this, too…
“Ch’en!” Swire calls again. Ch’en looks up at her, pain blurring the edges of her vision, and spots the slide of the elevator doors in her peripheral. “Shit, shit, shit—come on, I’ll support you—no, you stay the fuck back!” she shouts, her voice so loud and shrill it sounds like it fills up the whole lobby. Even the man who’d been aiming a gun at them blinks, looking taken aback, like he hadn’t expected the bounty target to be more intimidating than her bodyguard.
Ch’en is faintly aware of Swire half-dragging her into the elevator, then grabbing Chi Xiao from its scabbard and waving it at the men outside with one hand while furiously mashing the ‘close’ button next to the doors. “Miss S,” Ch’en manages to groan, resting her head on the wall behind her, “you do know that won’t do anything?”
“Shut up!” Swire shouts, although Ch’en can’t tell whether she’s talking to her or to the hired killers outside. The elevator doors finally slide closed, though not before someone takes a shot through the gap; it flies too high, narrowly missing the top of Swire’s head and lodging itself in the back of the elevator instead.
The previous frenzied chaos of shouts, stomps, and gunshots comes to an abrupt halt, replaced by the pleasant chimes of elevator music.
Ch’en slumps onto the floor with a groan and lets her eyes slip shut, just for a moment, and exhales heavily. Pain is still coursing through her, but it’s a manageable level… for now.
“Ah Ch’en, your leg,” Swire hisses, dropping to her knees before Ch’en. “Shit, that looks awful, urgh… don’t we need to stop the bleeding? Right, hold on—” And before Ch’en can stop her, Swire reaches inside Ch’en’s coat to take her knife and uses it to rip a strip of fabric off the edge of her shirt, pressing it gently to the wound on Ch’en’s calf. Ch’en sucks in a harsh breath through gritted teeth, screwing her eyes shut and focusing on breathing in and out, same as she has her whole life. “God, you didn’t say the job would be this bad! I should’ve done more…”
“Well,” Ch’en says, when she can trust her voice not to wobble, “I didn’t think it’d be this bad either.” She pauses. “What would you have done even if you knew anyway? Go with a different makeup palette…?”
Swire scowls. “Hey! Okay, maybe I’m not a professional killer approved by the, uh, the official board of professional killers or something, but I’m no damsel in distress for you to rescue either, Ah Ch’en! At least for the guy up there, I don’t plan on hiding behind you and making you do all the work again. I should hold my own against the dude who wants to kill me, don’t you think?”
“I know you’re not entirely stupid, Swire,” Ch’en groans, “so for once, can you just listen to me? Don’t do anything idiotic and leave it to me, alright?”
“But Ch’en—”
Ch’en takes Swire’s wrist and pushes it, not unkindly, away from her leg. She can’t tell if the bleeding has actually stopped, but the pain is at least a numb, faraway thing now, and Ch’en looks straight into Swire’s worried eyes. They’re so green, so bright. Ch’en doesn’t ever want to see them go dull. “I’m not doing this as just another job,” she says, slow and careful, making sure Swire understands. “I’m doing this because I want to. Because I…”
Because she—what? Because she cares for Swire, obviously, but just that much feels incomplete, like it doesn’t encompass everything Ch’en feels for Swire. She cares for Swire, and she wants to keep Swire safe, and she wants to spend more time with Swire from now on, and she’d give her life up for Swire if she had to, and she… likes… Swire.
Ch’en runs the words in her head again. I like Swire. And again. I like Swire. It feels good, feels complete, feels like she’s meant to think and feel and say and live by the words.
Oh, she thinks. So that’s what this feeling inside her has been all along.
The realization has her so stunned that whatever Swire might have said goes in one ear and out the other. By the time Ch’en has regained her senses, or as much as she can regain them when it still feels like her entire world has done a 180°, the elevator has made a little ding sound and its doors are sliding open. “Shit, we’re here,” Swire mutters, moving around to peer out at the top floor, where the CEO’s office is located. “Uh, looks pretty empty, I guess…”
Ch’en pushes herself up with what feels like Herculean effort, squinting into the darkness. There are vague outlines of regular office furniture, desks and chairs and a coffee table… and…
“Fuck,” she has just enough time to say, just as Swire grabs her and hauls the both of them out of the elevator, right before it blows up behind them.
The explosion isn’t big enough that it catches the both of them, but it is still strong enough for the entire building to rumble and for Ch’en to feel the heat of it even as they tumble and roll across the office away from it. “Hey! You crazy son of a bitch!” Swire shrieks at the human-shaped shadow standing beside the executive chair. “Who the fuck blows up their own elevator!? No, first, who the hell hires a hundred fucking killers to go for one lady? You’re insane! And you better be prepared to take out of your own dang wallet for Ah Ch’en’s hospital fees later!”
Ch’en can’t decide if she feels touched or embarrassed. As it is, her head is ringing too much for her to choose.
She hears a low chuckle from the front, and then footsteps; Ch’en blinks the spots out of her vision and looks up in time to see the client himself, moving languidly over towards them, a gun held loosely in his hand. “Figured you wouldn’t go down that easily,” he says. Even now Ch’en has to suppress the urge to shiver—she had spoken to him a few times before, all of them kept brief, but the oiliness of his voice never stops making her sick. “But God, you really have to make this hard for me, huh? Been weeks since I put that bounty out for you, but you still just won’t give up and die for me.”
Swire spits at his feet. “That’s my line. What’s with you anyway? Why do you want me dead so bad? Least you could do is kill me yourself instead of send in amateurs who can’t even touch me!”
The lazy smirk on the man’s face twists into a sneer. “Do you even need to ask, girl? Plenty of people want you dead because of your grandfather as much as I do—I’m just the one with the money to actually do it. And those amateurs—” He aims his gun at Ch’en’s face, but Ch’en can tell he’s only doing it for show rather than to actually shoot her, so she only glares right back. “They were only stopped because of this one, weren’t they? Don’t talk so big about something you didn’t even do.”
Swire gathers Ch’en tighter up in her arms, which really isn’t doing Ch’en’s heart any favors. It’s not a very effective way to ‘protect’ her, but Ch’en decides against telling Swire that. “Don’t touch her! You’re here for me, aren’t you?”
“As if you could do anything once your little bodyguard is out of the way.” As if to prove it, the man returns his gun to its holster at his side and crouches down to be eye-level with both of them, but especially with Ch’en.
Ch’en narrows her eyes, but it doesn’t seem like this is meant to distract her from other attackers; the office, for one, is too small for any other bodyguards to be hiding in. The elevator being blown up should ensure no backup, which means it’s just the three of them now. Finally, Ch’en thinks: some decent odds. “Get out of my face.”
“That’s not how you should speak to your client.”
“Why don’t we end this quickly?” Ch’en gently shakes Swire away, ignoring Swire’s mumbled protest, and feels around for Chi Xiao’s handle at her side. She still has one more gun, but she’s not sure if that will be more or less useful in closer quarters. “Stay put and it won’t even hurt when I kill you. Win-win for all of us, don’t you think?”
The man smiles, an unsettling thing in the darkness. “You’re quite the feisty thing, aren’t you? You weren’t cut out for your previous job and it looks like you’re no good for this one either. What ‘top-notch’ assassin bullshit did you feed me? You’re just a poor little girl letting emotions run the job, aren’t you?”
Ch’en’s not sure what he’s playing at, because the last thing that will work on her now are some taunts that she can’t care less about, but for some reason it’s Swire who takes the bait. “Shut up!” she snaps, jumping to her feet and rummaging in her handbag. “You—Don’t you dare talk to Ch’en like that! She was a great police officer, and she’s a great assassin now, and, and, uh, w-whatever she’ll be in the future, I know she’ll do a good job! So you, you shut up, and—”
“Miss S,” Ch’en says, staring blankly at the floor and trying not to die of embarrassment, “you can stop now.”
“Dang it! You shut up too, Ah Ch’en, I’m trying to defend your honor here!”
The man opens his mouth, probably to snark about how Swire sure has guts to talk back to him like that, but whatever he might have said turns into a half-pained, half-shocked shout when Swire finally retrieves whatever she’d been searching for in her bag and throws herself at him. Ch’en watches, stunned, as Swire absolutely bodies the man, slamming him head-first onto the office floor and whacking his right shoulder with a hammer.
The sight is so surreal that Ch’en can only think, That… is what she brought along when she ran back to her place to prepare? And then, right after that, No, what the hell else does she have in that bag, then!?
“Do you have any idea,” Swire’s shouting, punctuating every few words with another harsh smack of her hammer, the man flailing wildly beneath her, “how many damn times—you messed up my schedule—by sending those stupid assassins after me!? I had to cancel—so—many—freaking—appointments! My house is never gonna be the same! The knife scratches on the walls, the bullet holes in the floor—”
“Swire, get off of him,” Ch’en orders, scrambling onto her feet, but it’s a half-hearted attempt at most, and she’s hardly surprised when her words fall on deaf ears. She can’t get close with her sword with how entangled the two are, and she can’t shoot with her gun because she runs the risk of getting Swire instead.
Ch’en’s thoughts skid to an abrupt halt when she sees the man, cursing and spitting, finally get a good grip on his gun.
Instinct takes over, again, and Ch’en doesn’t even think before charging forward and shoving Swire out of the way, right before pain rips through her torso. Ch’en isn’t sure what downright filthy swear she lets out, because she’s too busy trying to stay conscious when it feels like her entire fucking body is on fire—she vaguely registers Swire shouting her name, and the man’s oily voice saying something she can’t make out, but she does have enough sense to notice when Swire makes to go for the man again. “No!” Ch’en groans, pushing herself back up to her feet again and doing her best to ignore how she can just about feel the bullet stuck inside herself. “Swire, stay back!”
“C-Ch’en—”
Ch’en can’t afford to focus on Swire too long—it’s taking everything in her just to stay standing. At least it looks like the man feels the same, staggering to his feet and clutching his shoulder, where Ch’en is almost certain the bones have shattered. Swire may not show it, usually because there’s hardly any need to, but she can pack a serious punch (or hammer) when she wants to. “What the hell was that? You crazy bitch!” he snaps. “Just lie down and die already! How hard can that be!?”
Deep breaths, deep breaths. Ch’en narrows her focus down to the man, in some small effort to block out the pain; it doesn’t quite work, but she also doesn’t have much choice here. “You’re not touching her again.”
“Big talk for someone—” The man steps forward, wincing when his arm swings uselessly at his side—“who just took a bullet for their client. How good of a bodyguard can you be?”
There’s a smart retort to be made here, like how Ch’en is an assassin rather than a bodyguard and the two are very different occupations, thank you very much, but speaking any more would be a waste of both time and energy, neither of which Ch’en has in abundance. So she moves forward instead, drawing her sword and swinging at the man—her grip is off, both from the blood slicking the handle and both from how every movement she makes sends her body into agony, but the man stumbles backwards and lands on his back, narrowly avoiding getting his face sliced open. Ch’en almost laughs—at least they’re on equal footing, thanks to Swire.
But he doesn’t give up, baring his teeth and kicking out at Ch’en. His foot hits her injured leg, whether on purpose or by accident she can’t tell, and she bites down on her lower lip so hard she tastes copper on her tongue. When he kicks again she stumbles, and the third time she falls to her knees but takes his own leg out with her, slicing down with Chi Xiao and sighing in pained relief at the shriek that gets out of him. She’s not sure if she had cut his leg off entirely, but the wound on his knee looks deep enough that she’s sure it would have made her past self feel sick.
God, now both her bullet wounds are open and bleeding again, though. Ch’en’s not sure how much blood she’s lost, only that she’s starting to feel light-headed and it’s growing more and more difficult to keep her eyes open and her wits about her. When she tries to swing her sword again, the man only needs to surge forward to knock it out of her hands; he crawls atop her, dragging his nearly-maimed leg behind him, and jabs his gun in her torso, right where the bullet from earlier had entered. Ch’en almost blacks out right there.
“Is that it?” the man shouts, pressing the barrel of his gun even deeper until Ch’en imagines a part of it must be close to entering the wound entirely. “Is this all you have, assassin? You can’t even cut the rest of my leg off, and now you’re done for!?”
Ch’en blinks blandly up at him. His face is twisted into a snarl, and she has no doubts about his resolve to kill both her and Swire. Somehow she pushes the pain far back enough that she hardly even feels it anymore, despite how he insistently jabs at the bullet wound with his gun before finally attempting to steady his grip and fire. This close, there’s no hope of trying to avoid it, and Ch’en can’t say she isn’t tempted to just let him do it. If she’s this injured from a mission that was supposed to be a walk in the park, maybe she deserves it. Maybe this is where her career ends and she finds a new job in whichever underworld she ends up in.
But those are silly thoughts, she thinks, and a part of her doesn’t want to go before she knows how it feels like to wake up in the mornings with Swire by her side.
The man is still speaking, rambling on and on about his plans to dethrone Swire’s grandfather from his position and take it for himself, but it looks like he’s just trying to distract her while he struggles with his gun. If Ch’en weren’t excruciatingly aware of how she’s bleeding out, she might have laughed. Maybe she actually does laugh, or let out an amused-sounding wheeze, because the man glares down at her and grabs her by the throat with his left hand. “Quit struggling, girl,” he growls, and if his arm weren’t shaking so much, maybe Ch’en might actually feel threatened. “This is… the end for you…”
“Is it?”
The man blinks. “What?”
And then he topples to the side with another scream when the hammer comes flying at his shoulder, the one holding his gun, probably rendering that arm unusable forever. Swire stands over him, gripping her hammer with both hands, eyes wide and gaze fixed on what Ch’en’s sure is the bloody mess her torso currently is, but now’s not the time to let that distract either of them. Ch’en doesn’t even bother standing, just sits up, draws her gun, and fires once.
She doesn’t think she’s ever heard a more satisfying gunshot than the one that pierces the man’s head. He dies without another word.
To her credit, Swire doesn’t waste time, dropping her hammer—it thankfully doesn’t land on Ch’en’s foot—and catching Ch’en in her arms just as she would have fallen back down to the floor. “Ch’en—Ch’en,” Swire gasps, cradling her head, resting her on her lap. Ch’en closes her eyes and thinks she could rest here forever if she had to, and even if she didn’t. “Oh my God, this is awful, this is so—”
“I get it, Swire,” Ch’en mutters. She turns a little so she can press her face to Swire’s stomach, sighing at the welcome warmth. Earlier everything had felt like it was on fire, but now it’s freezing cold, and Ch’en really just wishes the pain would settle on one temperature for her to deal with.
“I’m sorry!” Swire cries. If she were anyone else, Ch’en might have described that as a wail. “Okay, I admit it, I’m stupid and an idiot and a stupid idiot who got you hurt, I—I never wanted this to happen, you shouldn’t have had to get this hurt, oh my God, I—I’m sorry! I should’ve—I don’t—”
Ch’en’s torn between telling Swire to shut up, telling Swire to get to the point, or just not telling Swire anything at all, because it does kind of feel good to have her apologize for once. She opens her mouth to go for the second option, but she’s so tired all she can really do is breathe.
Swire falls silent for a second, her lip trembling, her eyes glimmering in the faint moonlight. She leans down until their foreheads are nearly touching, her hands soft and warm on Ch’en’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she says, again, and she sounds so terribly sincere that Ch’en almost feels bad. “I’m so sorry. I… Ah Ch’en, I never wanted this, I just wanted to be with you again, to spend more time with you again, e-even if it meant running into killers and stuff, but I didn’t want it to get this bad, I swear, I… I would’ve been fine with having to deal with other hitmen forever if it meant getting to be with you, you know that?” She sniffs, reaches up to scrub at her face. “I would’ve run away forever if it meant I got to run away with you, you know that!?”
“No need to shout,” Ch’en mumbles.
“Agh! Of course I need to shout! Don’t fall asleep, Ah Ch’en, open your eyes—don’t go,” Swire sobs, and Ch’en is startled enough by the sound that her eyes flutter open involuntarily. “You can’t go. Don’t leave me, please, I… love you, stupid, I love you, okay, I said it now, so please! You can’t go!”
For a moment, Ch’en can only stare up at Swire, at the tears dripping down her face and onto Ch’en’s own cheeks and nose and forehead. To ask her to focus through the pain is too much, and she’s been holding on through sheer willpower for a while now, but… but, what the hell? That hadn’t been some sort of auditory hallucination caused by blood loss, right? Ch’en’s bled out enough times to be able to differentiate reality from delusion, and… and this definitely hadn’t been the latter.
But then again, if she thinks about it, if she thinks about everything they’ve been through together, everything they’ve said to one another—if Ch’en thinks about it, maybe this had been a long time coming, huh.
“Swire,” she croaks; and then, louder, when Swire seems too caught up in her own tears to hear, “Swire.”
“No! D-Don’t tell me your last words! I don’t want to hear the—”
“Swire,” Ch’en sighs, “can you shut up, real quick.” Then, with the last of her strength, she reaches up with one hand to tug Swire down and kiss her.
It’s far from heated and desirous and passionate and all the other descriptions Ch’en’s heard about kisses, but it’s a kiss with Swire, which is good enough for her. Swire tastes of blood, but also of the fin balls they’d gotten earlier, of the burgers they had for lunch that afternoon, of the pancakes they had for breakfast a week ago, of arms around her middle and warm breaths behind her neck and her eyes, green and bright and everything Ch’en never thought she’d needed until she imagined how it might feel to see them gone. At first Swire doesn’t move, clearly caught off-guard, but then she seizes Ch’en’s face with unexpected fervor and kisses back so hard, Ch’en’s sure the cuts on her lips reopen just for her. If she compares them to flowers blooming beneath the light of the sun, it sounds a little more poetic and feels a little less painful.
When Ch’en draws back—or, more accurately, lets her head drop back to Swire’s lap—her lips are tingling and her head has been wiped clean of basically every other thought she’s ever had in there, replaced only by the need to do that again. Even the pain is a faraway thing now, though Ch’en can still feel her own blood dripping down her sides and pooling beneath her. “Miss S,” she manages to get out, “I have something very important to tell you.”
Swire sniffs. She doesn’t even tell Ch’en to quit calling her that. “W-What is it? Don’t tell me that’s gonna be our first and last kiss or…”
“Call for a Goddamn ambulance already.”
Swire stares down at her. Then she laughs shakily and swats the air above Ch’en’s face, as if to compensate for not being able to shake Ch’en by her shoulders lest she want to actually kill her. “God! Way to ruin the fucking mood, moron!” she shouts, snapping her handbag open to dig around for her phone, but there’s a trembling, hopeful little smile on her face that Ch’en badly wants to kiss, now that she knows she can do that and be kissed back.
Well. Right now, though, Ch’en’s fairly sure she’ll pass out if she tries to move any further. She settles back and savors the feeling of resting on Swire’s lap, if only because she has a feeling being this close to death is the only time Swire will let her do this.