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To the nurses, perhaps she looked worried, with her eyes always staring out the window, biting off her nails. Legs shaking restlessly whenever she sat in the uncomfortable brown leather chair, glaring at her watch. She had very little distraction, aside from the constant chatter of the hospital corridors and the quiet beeping of the machine.
She waited.
There were many reasons to be here. Many roads that had lead her directly to this room, to this day. If Martine cared for it, she would easily see; but she had little interest for the past. All that mattered was were she would go from here.
She had arrived curious and intrigued at first; now she stayed still, tired and bored. She had read the doctor’s health report a few times, had checked the wounds herself - found scars that hadn’t been mentioned, took note. There was nothing left to do but wait until Kara Stanton woke up again, which could take hours.
Martine really didn’t have that long. Which is why her smile was truly heartfelt when she noticed slow movements from under the covers of the hospital bed.
“You took your sweet time waking up,” Martine offered when Kara finally blinked. Three hours, fourteen minutes in - the pressure on Martine’s chest lifted slightly.
“Didn’t know I had company,” Kara forced the words out her throat, a raspy voice like she had just left a burning building or smoke thirty packs of cigarette.
With a shrug, Martine walked closer to the bed, grabbing the ridiculous orange plastic glass from the settee and passing it over to Kara. Drugged and dizzy, Kara struggled to get the straw between her dry lips and Martine looked away, strangely polite. There was something odd about seeing Kara move after her being so still. A strange warmth burned Martine’s cheeks when Kara indicated that she had enough water for now, and she tried to ignore it as she placed the glass back on the settee.
“Let me guess,” Kara cleared her throat lightly, letting her head fall back onto the pillow. Martine tried not to pay attention to the way her curls spread on the bedsheet, how Kara’s gaze turned sharp despite the softness of her face. “You want to know who I am.”
Martine laughed at the assumption, sitting on the edge of Kara’s bed with a kind of domesticity she liked to use on trained operatives to make them uncomfortable, to get under their skin. The trick was to stay close, always. To maintain eye contact. To become so familiar, they thought they had known you all their life. “You’re Kara Stanton,” she answered with a sigh, and flashed an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid there’s not much I don’t know about you.”
“You’d be surprised,” Kara taunted, her gaze holding up Martine’s. There was something playful in Kara’s voice, and yet her eyes promised nothing but violence and murder. A thunderstorm, trapped inside a woman.
An offer Martine was almost disappointed to dismiss.
“What’s that scar?” Martine questioned instead, her look falling on Kara’s uncovered skin as her fingers brushed over a thin white line, running across the chest just above Kara’s collarbone.
Just as Martine had predicted - or perhaps wished - Kara’s hand grabbed hers, twisting the wrist in an awkward angle, pushing until it hurt. “None of your business,” she threatened in a low growl.
Even weak, still close to the brink of death, Kara Stanton held her ground. Martine could respect that - she just didn’t have that much time. Three hours, twenty-six minutes in, the clock reminded her.
“If you insist,” Martine nodded, tugging on her hand until Kara released it.
Although a sane person would have moved away from the bed, Martine stayed in place, clenching her jaw and ignoring the throbbing ache running up her forearm. When she finally moved, it was only to face Kara more directly, with one hand leaning over Kara’s legs for support, a fist digging in the mattress just beside Kara’s thigh.
“What else could we talk about then?” Martine questioned with an innocent voice, her own smirk echoed in Kara’s. “Ordos, maybe?”
The name caused a spark of anger in Kara’s eyes.
“But you don’t want to talk about Ordos,” Martine noted calmly.
Kara only shrugged, but it couldn’t hide the turmoil raging in her gaze, making her warmer, almost burning. “There’s nothing to say.”
“You’re alone here,” Martine reminded her with a cold, detached voice. “You know what happens when you’re caught behind enemy lines.”
Kara’s feverish gaze darkened even more, vision blurring as she seemed to contemplate her options. Three hours, thirty-one minutes, Martine counted.
“I like helping people,” she announced with a soft smile, one finger brushing against Kara’s forehead, pushing a curl away from her burning eyes. For a second, Kara looked broken, sick. A wild animal could easily turn rabid; Martine stayed focused on her task, and not on the heat coming from Kara’s wounded body.
“No you don’t,” Kara sneered.
Martine leaned in this time, as if she was about to tell her a secret. “No, I don’t,” she confirmed a little too warmly. “But you, I can help.”
“How?” Kara asked almost as a knee-jerk reaction, and although she meant to sound sarcastic, the question still came out more earnest than anything else she had said.
“If my employer had tried to blow me to pieces,” Martine pondered aloud, “I would want revenge.”
Kara laughed at that, so hard she choked. Martine grabbed the glass of water once again, but Kara shook her head. “If you know everything about me,” she pointed out once she had quieted the coughs, “you know who I worked for. There’s no going against them that doesn’t end with me dead.”
Martine hummed.
Just that. She hummed in contemplation. Or like she had a secret.
Kara frowned. “You know something,” she observed, uncertain.
Martine sighed before she bit her lip. “Maybe,” she conceited.
She almost had Kara where she wanted her - or perhaps it was the other way around. Her task still clear in mind, Martine pushed aside the doubts that screamed that Kara was playing her just like she was. “I’m thinking, if my employer tried to blow me to pieces,” she repeated, “I would want to know why.”
“My line of work is dangerous,” Kara raised an eyebrow, unconvinced.
“That, it is,” Martine nearly beamed at her. “But don’t you want to know why you had to die?”
Kara blinked.
Just that. She blinked as if in deliberation. Contemplating an offer she couldn’t refuse.
“What do you want from me?” Kara asked, and Martine knew she had succeeded. Both a thrill and a disappointment, it was.
And yet, she grinned. “Oh,” she left the side of the bed running a hand through her hair, “just for you to run a few errands…”
Three hours, forty-nine minutes. Greer had given her a bit more time; five hours to break Kara Stanton, and Martine could secure a job with Decima, and get her past truly buried where no one would find it.
Outside the window the horizon cut a threatening sharp line. Martine ignored the clouds gathering above the hospital, the pressure settling around her again, like a giant vice grip pushing her ribs in.
“Well, Kara,” she breathed out almost painfully. “I look forward to working with you.”