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bilibiche · 4 days

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I should have known that sometime in the story you would force them to trigger the gas...horrible to think that a gas like that exists 😧

A man seemingly without scrupules lets his pride take him one step too far...and ends up losing everything. ..

Pero always three steps ahead of William, and helping him on the path to redemption before Will realizing it at first.

Miss Grenoble? I want to learn more about the crazy cat-lady😆

I suppose the calmness of the chapter belies the storm that's coming...

Collision

Part 6

Description: Niki learns the story behind Pero and William. Meanwhile, Pero is trying to keep the government from discovering their location, something made increasingly difficult by the ever-tightening noose around the safehouse.

Warnings: Pero Tovar x OFC, no reader insert, conspiracy, cursing, angst, mentions of graphic violence, mention of wild animals being kept as pets, friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, secret identity, AU fic. Rating: Mature/Explicit 18+ONLY Word Count: 6800 Series Masterlist

Author's Note: Again, lots of conversation here, and most of the chapter is from Niki's point of view. I do wonder if I'll ever be able to write a series with short chapters...

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He’s been gone for three weeks, and it’s been twelve days since the Chinese private security team had found them, which is why there’s been no communication since then.

Pero had checked in daily before that, making sure they were all okay and reassuring them that he was making progress on keeping the US government off their trail. But when Will’s tracking system had come online and he’d seen that their other enemy was way too close for comfort, he’d activated a digital kill-switch, disabling all possibility of contact with the outside world, but also making the house undetectable electronically.

Unfortunately, that hadn’t been enough to hide them. The team had already narrowed down their search grid enough that they could visibly scout the remaining wilderness, until they’d found the house, masquerading as a clifftop, complete with trees growing on the roof. And since the tracking system had also been taken offline, the hunted had been unable to see the hunters coming.

Nikita hadn’t known about the toxic gas, so when the nurse and the man she’d never seen before at that point, had come running into the bedroom and fumbled through a closet by the door, she’d been utterly confused. But she knows the sound of a hermetic seal locking in place, and she could guess what the loud hissing throughout the rest of the house might’ve been about. Especially when it had been quickly followed by strangled screams and then thumps of bodies hitting the floor.

Gillian had been distraught for most of the six hours that they’d all been trapped in that room while the house had ventilated itself clear of all toxins, and once the door had opened, it had only gotten worse. The gas must’ve been something corrosive to biological materials, because the smell of the bodies had been a blend of melted plastic, burnt skin, and the strangely sweet but utterly disgusting smell of decaying human remains.

Niki had still been too weak to help clean up, but she’d gotten well enough to be able to stand on her own two feet by then, and had seen one of the intruders, the semi-liquefied remains of which had been partly responsible for creating that smell. The combination of the sight and odor had made her vomit, which had prompted the nurse to order her back to bed. She was, and still is, too vulnerable to be able to afford losing meals.

But she’d felt bad about not being able to help them drag the barely cohesive bodies to the furnace in the basement, or even to help scrub the blood and half melted remnants of skin and flesh from the floors. She’s quite sure that Gillian will never fully recover from having had to do that. The poor girl clings to her professional persona to cope, using the fact that Niki still needs her help to go to the bathroom and get dressed, to keep the darkness away from her conscious thoughts. But there’s no escaping them at night, which is why the nurse has barely slept since that day.

The man, William, doesn’t either, but that seems to be part of his normal routine. He hasn’t spoken much since Pero left, despite Gillian’s attempts to get him to talk about how the two men know each other. And Niki suspects that it’s because he’s ashamed. His behavior makes her think ex-military, and probably not the kind that sits behind screens. More likely, he’s been on the ground and seen truly horrific things, evident by how measured and controlled his reactions to the almost melted bodies had been. But Tovar has never been in the military, so that can’t be where they met.

Without his computers, he seems so lost. Like he has no use or purpose in life unless he’s tapping at keys and looking stuff up. So, he probably doesn’t do much besides those kinds of things these days, and that makes her think he suffers from PTSS. Although, she can’t possibly know how severe his problems might be.

Today though, twelve days after the intrusion, it isn’t the potentially frail former military man that’s responsible for the latest drama. Instead, it’s Gillian who finally reaches her breaking point. She has just helped Niki to have a shower and get dressed when she suddenly announces that she can’t stay in this house for another minute, and heads for the front door. Both of the other houseguests let her leave, despite knowing that she could actually end up getting lost and dying out there on her own. But they know how much she’s been suffering, and that maybe this is what it’ll take to keep her from going insane here.

While they wait for her to hopefully find her way back, Niki and William stay together in awkward silence, sitting in the amazingly comfortable living room sofas and playing cards to try and pass the time. But the silence leaves her fighting to stay awake, so after about half an hour, Niki starts trying to get a conversation going.

“Which branch of the service were you in?” she asks, hoping that the question isn’t intrusive enough to trigger any bad reactions in him.

He doesn’t seem surprised at her assessment of him as former military, but he also doesn’t look happy about it.

“Army,” is all he replies, so she doesn’t push the subject.

His tone isn’t harsh, but it’s clipped enough that she knows to steer clear of any follow-up inquiries on the subject.

“And now you do research?” she leaps into the present instead, to see if he might be more comfortable talking about that.

“I have my own company. Kinda like a private investigator, just specialized on digital analysis. Most of the time I do background checks for corporate hires.”

“Oh, so you make sure that people aren’t hiding things from their resume that might come back to bite the rich company executives in the ass?”

“Basically,” he agrees.

“That sounds kinda boring,” she carefully admits, hoping he won’t take offense.

“Sure,” he shrugs. “But I’ve also been hired by city councils and courts, police departments and fire rescue services, to ensure that the people hired to keep us safe, are actually good people. And it pays the bills and lets me stay in my house. I’m not good with… the outside world. I stay away from it as much as I can.”

“Nothing wrong with that. The world isn’t that nice of a place for people with any kind of trauma.”

He offers no objection to her words, so he apparently agrees. Still, she decides not to carry on with that line of inquiry. She wants to ask him about Pero, about how their paths could’ve crossed when their lives seem so far removed from one another, but she doesn’t know how to phrase it so that he might feel okay with talking about it, when it’s clearly a subject that bothers him. So, she remains quiet instead. But then…

“You wanna know about him, don’t you?” Will asks unexpectedly, after a couple of minutes of silence.

It’s his turn to deal and he’s gathered up the cards, but he’s just shuffling them slowly between his hands, without any sign that he intends to start up a new game. His head is bowed, watching his own hands, probably too uncomfortable to meet her gaze as she observes him. Trying to figure out how much she can ask for, how triggering this might be for him, she looks for signs of agitation in his features. But he seems calm. For now.

“Yes,” she admits, and he squirms, only just enough that she can see it.

“Even if you won’t like anything you hear?” he posits, clearly ill at ease with the subject, but somehow still willing to endure that if she asks him, which seems odd.

It’s not like he owes her anything.

“Yes,” she repeats.

He takes a deep breath then, before slowly putting the deck of cards on the table and then clasping his hands together, as if trying to prevent them from doing something else.

“Ten years ago, I had the world at my feet,” he starts, speaking low and sounding unfathomably sad now. “I worked on Wall Street, and I was good. I was rich, powerful among my peers, respected and admired.”

He pauses and makes a little disgusted sound in the back of his throat, shaking his head almost imperceptibly before he continues.

“And I had a gorgeous young fiancé. A trophy. Someone I told myself that I loved because of the status it afforded me to have her on my arm. The envy that it sparked in every man I met, but especially in my rivals. I felt like such a king,” he says, and then scoffs. “I was so stupid.”

He’s wringing his hands now, rocking himself back and forth where he sits a few times, as if trying to chase away something unsettling from his frame.

“Tovar found me because of the people that I’d hurt to get to where I was. The lives I’d destroyed. He’s really fucking brilliant at that. Seeing people’s shadows, no matter how well hidden they might be. It’s like he doesn’t even needs to look for them, he just sees them, as plainly as other people see what you’re wearing or what car you drive. He just knows.”

She’s aware of that side of Pero too, although he’s never turned that skill on her, so far as she knows. But she’s seen him at work. Watched him a few times when he’s been introduced to new coworkers. Sometimes he’d looked at them with utter indifference, as though they couldn’t have been less interesting to him, while other times… one glance had been enough to turn his gaze hard and his eyes dark.

“His thing was that whenever he found someone who was cruel, who disregarded other people and their pains, he would punish them by robbing them of something they cared about. Money or possessions mostly. And he took on anyone. He was relentless. He created this character, Mr. Hood, who would be the only one that his victims ever interacted with, and never in person, always over the phone. That was how he protected himself, and that was how I first encountered him,” Will explains, but then falls silent, seemingly lost in memories.

“He targeted you?” she asks, to encourage him to continue.

“Yeah. One day I get a phone call from an unregistered number, and the voice on the other end says ‘Hello, Mr. Garin. My name is Mr. Hood, and this is a robbery.’ I made the mistake of laughing at him, assuming that it was a joke, because I was a king. No one could touch me. He gave me five seconds to let me pretend that I had any sliver of control left over the situation, and then he took over. And once he did, I had already lost. But of course, I refused to realize that, right up until the bitter end.”

“But if he was just a voice on the phone, how’d you end up meeting him?” she wonders, and he lets out a deep sigh.

The kind of sigh that’s a lot more than just an exhale. The kind that she can feel in her own chest, even though the weight it carries isn’t hers to shoulder.

“My arrogance knew no bounds, so when he demanded a hundred thousand dollars to keep quiet about the twenty people which he’d found out that I’d scammed out of their life’s savings in order to further my own career, rather than accept my punishment and move on, I took it as an offensive insult to my character. And I couldn’t possibly let that slide. That kind of money was pocket-change for me at that time, so you’d think that I would’ve just happily paid and hoped that he kept his word. But no. Out of sheer spite, I had to put him in his place.”

He closes his eyes for a few beats, and he somehow looks a decade older. As though the pain of his own past is eating away at him so mercilessly that his body can’t keep up. Clearly, he wasn’t always a good person, but she didn’t know him then, so she can’t judge his past decisions. For now, she feels only sad for him.

“I knew people,” he continues while slowly opening his eyes, although his hands are restlessly traveling from his thighs to his neck and back again, over and over. “People who could locate most anyone, for a price. The local cartel had a network of spies within the homeless community, keeping an eye on the movements of law enforcement to give them a heads up on raids and such. So, I hired this kid, Billy, to stake out the money drop. Mr. Hood had instructed me to leave the money at a specific location and then walk away, and told me that if I did that, I’d never hear from him again.”

“Let me guess; something went horribly wrong?” she infers, but he shakes his head.

“No. I dropped off the money and left, trusting Billy to check out who would come to collect it. What I hadn’t anticipated, was just how determined Tovar was to keep his identity a secret.”

“He sent someone else to retrieve it?”

“I’m afraid it was even more complicated than that,” he tiredly grumbles, clearly uncomfortable speaking about this, but he doesn’t stop. “The guy that Billy saw retrieve the money was actually a runner for the local mob, but the kid obviously didn’t know that. So, he gave me a cell phone pic of this guy and I used my computer skills to track him down. I was able to catch up to him when he was walking into a rundown old house which I now know was a drop-point for money heading to their launderer. But back then, I just thought it was where this asshole lived, so I came at him like a raging bull. Obviously, he tried to defend himself and it turned into a fight, ending with me killing this guy with a fucking steak knife.”

She refrains from commenting on this unexpected development, but she has to bite her own tongue hard, because Will looks absolutely horrified at the memory.

“It took a while to calm down after that. I’d never killed anyone before, although Tovar would disagree, since one of the people whose money I’d stolen had ended up dying because they couldn’t afford medical treatment. But I’d certainly never deliberately taken a life before that night, and not with my own hands. Once I got my adrenaline under control, I started looking through the house and found a duffel bag full of money on the bed, so I grabbed that and left. And I was actually kinda proud of myself when I got back to my car. That I’d beaten this asshole, that I hadn’t let him hound me around, that I’d taken back control. But then… my phone rang. An unknown number. I answered it, and that same deep voice said: ‘I really wish you hadn’t done that.’ Then he hung up.”

Impossibly, he seems to turn greyer before her eyes now. His entire body looks like it’s shrinking with each breath, and his skin is losing color. All of which tells her that whatever happened next, this is the part he’s ashamed of. The part he regrets, probably more than anything else in his life.

“Turns out that the mob has real-time surveillance on these places nowadays, to discourage stealing among their employees, so by the time I was getting back in my car, they’d already identified me. And since they’ve got their enforcers strategically placed all over the areas where they operate, they got to my apartment a full hour before I did,” he has to stop and clear his throat, but his voice is still broken and weak when he speaks again. “Christine… was still warm when I found her on our bed… They’d taken their time with her. To send me a clear message.”

“Oh, god,” she whispers, feeling her own throat go dry and a lump form in her stomach at the mere thought of what they might’ve done to that poor woman.

“At first, I blamed Mr. Hood for everything. But I couldn’t prove that he even existed, so naturally no one believed me,” Will picks up the thread after a minute, and it sounds as though he needs to keep talking to not have a total breakdown, so she sits quietly and listens. “Still, in my own head, I wasn’t to blame for any of it. It wasn’t my fault that I’d been blackmailed, it wasn’t my fault that the money drop had been another layer of deception, and how the hell was I supposed to know he’d set me up to get caught by the fucking mafia… I had an excuse for all of it. Refusing to accept that if I’d just been willing to part with one percent of my wealth, everything would’ve been fine.”

By the time he stops to breathe, trying to hold the tears back, he does sound calmer, and she wonders if this might be the first time that he’s ever talked about this. He seems spent, though, and there’s still a lot she doesn’t understand, so she tries to give him a nudge to keep talking.

“Okay, that all makes some kinda sense, but one thing I don’t get is, if Pero set this up so that the mob would get involved if you tried to investigate, how was he supposed to get his money in the end?”

“He had a system. To protect himself, the money he extorted from people never actually passed through his own hands. I never managed to figure out that system in its entirety, but I know that he would’ve siphoned his money out of the pot that went to the launderer, somewhere in transit, and probably through someone else’s hands, even then. He really is a god damned genius. If he hadn’t decided to quit, he could’ve ruled the world,” he explains, and his tone has traces of admiration now.

“Do you know why he quit?” she asks, wanting to uncover as much as she can about the man that she’s grown to love, even though she knows almost nothing about his life.

“No. I never asked,” Will replies, deflating her hopes a bit.

He’s been talking for a while now, but throughout this entire story, the only thing she’s learned about Pero is that he was a career criminal for a while. That he was plagued by the injustices of the world and felt compelled to do something about it. That’s it. For a man who’s clearly had a profound influence on William’s life, the veteran seems to know no more about him than Niki does.

“You still haven’t told me how you came to know the man behind Mr. Hood,” she prompts, still hoping that there might be more to the story.

“Uh… Well, after Christine, and everything that followed with the legal investigation, my life fell apart. Whether I was able to admit it or not, I was drowning in guilt. So, I enlisted in the army and went to war in Afghanistan, thinking that putting my own life on the line would somehow make up for it. Predictably, however, killing more people did nothing to lighten the crushing weight on my soul. And when I came back, I was even more fucked up. But by then, I’d at least figured out that I couldn’t run from my demons and that I just had to learn to live with them. I started my company and got to do some real work, actually help people in a visible and tangible way for a change. It made me a hermit, but I didn’t much care since there was no one in my life that would miss not seeing me. Then one day, I get a text from an unknown number, asking if I can find someone. And not just anyone. This person wanted me to find one of the FBI’s ten most wanted criminals, which at first thought seemed ridiculous, so I declined and that was that. But the next day, the phone rings.”

“Unknown number?” she guesses, and he fixes her with a peculiar look in his eyes.

“I’ll never forget the chill that went through me when I heard that voice again after four years,” he says, shivering at the memory before shaking his shoulders, as if trying to shed the feeling. “He wanted me to find this criminal and he was willing to pay for it, but I was freaking out just hearing from him again, so I just hung up on him. And what do you know, the next morning there’s a knock on my door, and there he is. The ghost that destroyed me without even trying. All he said was my name and I had a full-fledged panic attack right there in my own front hall. But the bastard just waited me out. Standing there in the doorway like some fucking vampire waiting for an invitation. Once I’d calmed down, he crouched beside me and said: ‘If you wanna make up for your past, help me serve some misery to some real assholes.’ Then he got up and left, closing the door behind him. I had no intention of helping him do anything, he was the last person in the world that I was ever gonna trust. And if I’d simply ignored him, he might’ve left me alone eventually.”

“But you saw your chance to learn more…” she deduces, and he half-smiles in a nervous sort of way.

“Yeah. I made the same mistake all over again, thinking I could best him. That if I could work out his real identity, I’d be able to expose him and get some retribution. Which was, of course, exactly what he was expecting me to do. So, the next day, there was a package waiting for me on my kitchen table. It was an envelope containing every scrap of information that could be found about him, and even with a copy of his birth certificate and driver’s license, it all fit onto one single piece of paper. He had no credit cards, no social media accounts, he’d never owned a phone or Bluetooth device that could be tracked, never been arrested, never had his prints taken. Nothing but a home address, a few hospital visits, and a barely used bank account to his name.”

“Hm. That tracks with the man I know today too. And I guess he wouldn’t have deposited any stolen money into a bank account, eventually someone would question where it all came from.”

“Absolutely, it all made perfect sense with what little I knew about him, but I was still determined to get back at him, now that I’d gotten it into my head that I might have a chance to accomplish it. And it wasn’t like I was gonna take that information at face value, I still checked everything out myself before I believed that it really was all that could be learned about him from afar. Then, I made my next major mistake, by trying to expose him online, sending out a spam email with his picture and real name, along with a red label warning saying that this man is a dangerous criminal.”

“Why do I get the feeling that he didn’t take that very well?” she asks, cringing involuntarily at the mental image of the perpetually private Pero finding out about something like that.

“I learned two hard lessons that day,” Will admits, and the look in his eyes has already told her that she's correct in her assumption. “Firstly, that I wasn’t the only computer expert he had access to, because the email was sucked up into a virtual vortex the moment that it was sent, never reaching a single inbox. Which has to mean that he had anticipated something like that and had digital safeguards put in place in advance, triggered by anything that directly uses his name or picture.”

“That sounds like something more or less impossible to pull off. Or is that just my ignorance on all computer matters, talking?”

“It’s not the simplest coding in the world, no. But it’s not impossible. The second thing I learned, is that when you piss this man off, he doesn’t settle for threats, he makes you feel his anger, even though you can’t see him. For two full weeks after I’d tried to expose him like that, I got emails, phone calls, and letters, all telling me things like my payments weren’t going through, or my house was up for sale, or my bank had gotten reports about supposed illegal activities that I was engaged in, and was closing my accounts. The police showed up on my front steps three times in those two weeks, and my house was searched from top to bottom twice. It was constant, relentless stressors and anxiety triggers, culminating in a final call where I was informed that my house had been condemned due to asbestos having been found in the basement, and that it was being scheduled for demolition. And it was all legit. Then it suddenly just stopped.”

“His way of telling you that he was still the one in control,” she summarizes, and he nods.

It does occur to Niki, as she’s listening to all this, that perhaps she should be worried about potentially having a child with a man who clearly knows how to terrorize people. But she isn’t. Whether because she understands his reasoning, or because she just doesn’t care what those reasons might’ve been, she can’t tell right now. What she does know, is that hearing all this is giving her more comfort than one would expect. Because it’s reassuring her that Pero really might be able to keep her safe from everything that hunts her.

“Exactly, and that he could crush me without even breaking a sweat,” Will answers, and then continues, apparently hellbent on sharing everything he can about this, no matter how much it tortures him to say it. “He showed up again after that, sat me down in my kitchen and explained to me that if I didn’t wanna help him all I had to do was say no. And that if I kept insisting on trying to hurt him, he was gonna use the power that he’d accumulated over a decade of digging out people’s dirtiest secrets, to make every second of my life one endless panic attack.”

“A threat which he’d just proven that he absolutely can make good on.”

“Yeah. So, I stopped fighting him. And that’s where this story takes an unexpected turn. At least, it was entirely unexpected to me. But when I started working with him, even with how rarely he needed my help with something, that’s when I started to heal. That’s when the guilt stopped being so absolute and began to become manageable. That’s when I started feeling like a worthwhile person again, even if it was just for those little increments of time.”

He pauses, taking a few deeper breaths, and finally seems to stop shrinking, finding strength in the unexpected positivity that this story apparently ends with.

“It’s like he knew… Like he sought me out specifically because he knew that it would help me,” he ponders, looking puzzled. “Why, I don’t know. Maybe he feels guilty too, on some level. But I know that he already had good computer people working with or for him before he came to me, and I can’t think of any other reason why he would replace them with me, when they were clearly doing a good enough job. Honestly, I’m not sure if he even knows this himself. I get the feeling that he’s always frustrated around me, and I know that he always expects nothing but hatred from me. But I don’t hate him anymore. I’m not even sure that I ever did. I just don’t know how to tell him that in a way that he might understand… or believe.”

He ends on a tone of sadness, which clicks something into place for Niki, regarding who this man is at heart, and what drives him.

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Because you need him to be safe. Because despite everything he’s put you through… you think of him as a brother.”

She says it softly, and watches his gaze drop to the floor in silent agreement.

“The only thing that he put me through was the loss of that tiny amount of money. Everything else was my own doing. And do you wanna know the most pathetic part?” he asks before looking up to see her nod once, so he answers. “I still have millions. Millions of dollars just sitting there, collecting interest, untouched, unused. I could live anywhere I want. I could buy almost anything I might fancy, but at most, I spend a few hundred dollars on new computer parts each year. Hell, I don’t even have anyone to leave the shit to when I die.”

“Why not give it away? There’s plenty of people in need all around us,” she suggests, already certain that he’s considered that, but curious to hear why he’s holding on to his fortune.

“Yeah, I know. But I just…” he cuts himself off, and it sounds like he was about to say something he might regret. But then he seems to change his mind and continues anyway. “I want Tovar to have it, but I know that he’ll never take it.”

Ah. Of course, that’s what halts him in his tracks. But Niki knows something that William doesn’t, which might come to change both men’s perspectives on this matter.

“Don’t be so sure,” she cautions with a small smile. “Given that we make it through this crap, he might be about to become a father, and that could very well make him rethink a gift like that.”

“You’re pregnant?” he asks with raised brows, but they soon fall again when his eyes trace the pattern of visible injuries on her body.

“I don’t know. I was before the attack and they thought that it was still alive after my surgery, but there’s no telling if it still is,” she explains, and his expression turns sorrowful.

“I hope it is. What’s happening to you is atrocious. If it costs you your unborn child too…”

He doesn’t have the words to finish that sentence, and neither does she, so they just sit there in silence for a while, thinking to themselves. And then there’s a knock on the door, making them both jump. There’s a hidden camera on the left side of it which doesn’t work right now, since all non-essential electronics are still being kept off, but the camera has a clever feature specifically for situations like this. There’s a peephole directly behind the lens. Ordinarily, the casing behind the lens prevents it from being see-through, but if the kill-switch is activated, that casing slips down and the lens becomes a tiny window.

Since Niki is still slow to move, Will gets up and reaches the door before she’s even managed to turn in her seat. He beckons for her to slide down a bit, where she’s less visible, while he sneaks up to the peephole. It sits at chest height, so he has to bend down to look through it, and once he does, his shoulders drop in relief, and he unlocks the door.

“Welcome back,” he greets as Gillian comes through the opening, hugging herself and shivering slightly, and then he quickly closes it behind her.

“Thanks,” she quietly responds before making a beeline for the bathroom, where Niki hopes that she’ll be taking a hot shower.

Given how long they’ve been trapped here together, she hasn’t learned much about the sweet nurse either. Their conversations have mainly revolved around Niki’s recovery, or the problems that they’ve all been facing on a daily basis. She wonders how long it’ll be like this. How long they’ll have to endure this isolation and perpetual disconnection from the outside world.

She’s never been one to lament being disconnected. It’s usually been something she’s sought after voluntarily. But now, when she has no choice, the lack of information and ability to assimilate to the rest of humanity, feels strangely similar to a wall being built around her.

-=<>=-=<>=-=<>=-

He hasn’t heard from them in twelve days, and it eats away at the back of his mind like sharks on a whale carcass. He knows that the kill-switch has been activated because when he tried to make his daily call to Will, the number was suddenly invalid. Not just offline, but the actual phone number has been scrubbed, so that even if the phone is turned back on, it’s no longer connected to any network and can’t reveal the safehouse’s location.

There’s only one reason why that switch would’ve been activated, and Pero has to fight himself every second of every day, not to race back there and find out if everyone made it through what he can only assume was the Chinese discovering their location. Whoever that private radical is, they’ve clearly got pockets deep enough to utilize only the very best technology that money can buy. Most likely, they’ve managed to trace the truck part of the way and then extrapolated, or they got lucky and caught sight of Will, unwittingly guiding them the rest of the way.

The only thing he knows for sure is that it couldn’t have been his own government that attacked, because he’s got enough eyes and ears among them now to have at least a basic grasp of how their search for Nikita is going. Mr. Hood has been working hard upon his return to the world, but he knows that the voice on the phone won’t be enough to persuade some of the more seasoned professionals, which is why he’s looking them up in person.

The Qwerty brothers had been easy enough to find, thanks to Huang’s list, but after a day of observing them, Pero had realized that they weren’t an immediate threat right then. They are clearly on standby, either waiting for new orders or a new job to come their way. After their failure at the hospital, which they both unfortunately survived, their contract may have been revoked. The professional assassin business is surprisingly competitive, so someone else could’ve already been hired to replace them.

He hopes not, because that would mean new faces for him to track down. But in any case, he remains close to the brothers while he works on establishing an information network around project Amazon and everyone who’s currently taking an interest in it. For almost three weeks he’s been watching them, studying their behavior to learn their secrets, so when the time finally comes to confront them, he’s well prepared.

Going at them one by one will only waste time, so he approaches them when they’re on their way home from their most frequented bar, in the small hours of the morning. Earlier that evening, he’d seen one of them receive a message and then instantly show it to the other one, which had made both men shift behavior. From casual drinks and playfulness among the local regulars, to suddenly keeping to themselves and quietly boosting each other’s confidence in clear preparation for a mission.

They might not be going after Niki again, but he can’t take that risk. He has to know either way. They’re both sure on their feet despite the alcohol, when he steps out in front of them, blocking their way to their car.

“Good evening, Mr. Bloom and Mr. Bloom,” he greets, nodding to the men as he addresses them each.

They stop in their tracks at first, but there’s no question that they recognize him from the hospital, and they’re not happy to see him.

“You,” the Tom Cruise wannabe growls, and then both men come towards him.

“You can call me Mr. Hood,” Pero calmly answers, not moving an inch as he sees the realization hit them both at the same time.

There aren’t many people among the rich, famous or corrupt that haven’t heard of him, and among the larger criminal elements in the country he’s almost legendary already. He takes one measured step closer to them, and the brothers almost reflexively step back.

“I have a proposition for you,” he continues, standing still now to make sure that they’re paying attention to his words. “Work for me as double agents against your employer, and I won’t tell the lovely Miss Grenoble about the cat.”

Both men flinch and then quickly glance at each other. They know exactly which cat he’s talking about, they just can’t understand how the hell he knows about it. If they had any doubts that he might be bluffing about being the real Mr. Hood, it vanishes with the understanding that he knows even their most closely guarded secrets. And that’s all it takes to flip their loyalties. Most assassins are, at their core, primarily concerned with their own lives first.

“It was general Hayword who hired us,” the Mark Wahlberg guy says.

“And what was the message he sent you tonight?” Pero questions, to which the other man picks up his phone and reads the message out loud.

It’s a set of coordinates only about thirty miles from the safehouse, along with a sternly worded order to search the entire area, even if they have to trudge through marshlands and cross rivers on foot. This is bad news. It means that the government is closing in on them, probably aided by whoever it is that’s already attacked. And at this point, that means it’s only a matter of time before they’re found and that all he can do is delay the inevitable.

“Alright, here’s what you’re gonna do,” he firmly declares, staring the brothers down with a hard glare. “You’re gonna go to those coordinates and you’re gonna look around. Only one of you is going to remember to bring a phone or other trackable device and it’s gonna end up lost in a puddle of mud or at the bottom of a river within the first hour. And then the two of you are gonna park your asses on a rock somewhere, for at least two days. Now, I don’t care if that rock is an actual rock, or if it’s a hotel room a hundred miles away, the point is that you’re gonna let the general think that you did search that area and came up with nothing. Understood?”

“And when we call from a payphone miles away from the search area and Hayword orders us back out there because we’re apparently idiots who don’t know how to close a fucking pocket?” the Wahlberg guy counters, but Pero just throws him a snide smile.

“He’ll believe that you really are that stupid, because you somehow managed to mess up a simple hospital kill, turning it into a public spectacle, and then completely failed to reacquire your target, forcing the general to do the legwork himself. He’ll be angry, for sure, but he will buy it. Hook, line and sinker. So, you’re gonna say ‘yes, sir’ and keep pretending to search until I say otherwise.”

He leaves without waiting for them to confirm their compliance. He knows that they’ll do as they’re told, the threat of Miss Grenoble is much more sinister than it sounds. She may be the epitome of a crazy cat-lady, except that her cats are of the wild, three to six-hundred pounds range, and she adores them more than her own children. She has and will feed live humans to them if she gets angry.

But he also leaves because there’s a crawling under his skin now. An urgency. He needs to get back to the house as quickly as possible, to work out a plan with the others for how, when and where they’re gonna go to avoid the efforts of general Hayword. Unwanted images of blood staining the polished, soft brown of the wooden walls, floods his mind. Walking in to discover bodies, tortured and mutilated… His head has a tremendous capacity for conjuring up dark scenarios and displaying them to him.

He just hopes that he hasn’t somehow developed clairvoyance in the past three weeks.

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Part 7

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#pedro pascal characters #pero tovar fanfiction #pero tovar x original female character #modern!pero #the great wall fanfiction #the great wall au #sirowsky stories

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bilibiche · 4 days

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Pero made sure that nothing and nobody could ever hurt him after being bullied, and now he's vulnerable because he finally has opened up to another person! 😢😍

I needed to read some real fluffy stories, before moving on to chapter 6 😅

Gillian is awesome, and so brave! Curious about William...

Collision

Part 5

Description: Pero knows what he needs to do, but knowing it doesn't help when he can't convince himself to leave while he's so confused about his own feelings.

Warnings: Pero Tovar x OFC, no reader insert, Pero's pov, conspiracy, cursing, angst, use of the word hackers, friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, secret identity, AU fic. Rating: Mature/Explicit 18+ONLY Word Count: 5700 Series Masterlist

Author's Note: This is conversation heavy. And the next one will feature a small timegap to move things along a little.

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It takes two hours to set up the computer system and connect it to the safehouse’s secure network, but once it’s done, Will goes straight to work. True to his word, he’s not here for a vacation. Rather, he seems intent on unraveling this mystery completely, starkly offended that the people behind it have managed to sneak past his defenses. Pero helps him get everything ready, but he can’t help with the search, so once the other man goes to work, he returns downstairs. Where Gillian’s waiting.

She’s leaning against the wall of the hallway that leads to the bedrooms, but when he comes down the stairs, she pushes off the exposed wood and crosses her arms over her waist.

“Who are you really?” she demands, clearly jarred by Will’s earlier comment.

He’s been waiting for this. Her natural inclination to help and care for others have kept her from prodding, and she’s seen how protective and tender he’s been towards Niki from the beginning of this mess, which has probably left her feeling largely at ease with him. But now, when there’s another source of information, when she’s no longer alone with him and technically at his mercy, she’s seemingly decided that the answers which didn’t feel important enough to ask for before, have since become necessary.

“Why don’t we take a seat. I’m gonna need some coffee for this,” he suggests, and then moves into the kitchen to start making the brew.

He can hear that she follows and sits down by the breakfast table section of the kitchen island behind him, so he starts talking while he works.

“In my late teens, I discovered that going through school being bullied or avoided by every kid I’d ever been around, had resulted in an exceptional ability to read people. I could tell from observing someone for just brief moments at a time, not just what type of character they were, but whether they had secrets, what kinds of fears plagued them, what their favorite things were, and so on. And I was bitter and angry enough, even back then, that I saw no reason to use that skill for anything helpful. So, I started my own little criminal empire instead.”

He turns around and leans against the counter once the coffee machine has started working, and when he meets her eyes, she looks only curious. Through her work, she’s had to learn to listen to people and decipher the truthfulness of what she hears, while remaining as neutral as possible herself. He knows that she’s not gonna interrupt him, and that she’ll likely only asks questions if there’s something in his story that she doesn’t understand.

“Like with most enterprises, criminal or otherwise, I started small,” he continues. “I tricked or blackmailed people out of things that were precious to them for one reason or another. Mostly money, because it was useful to me, but also because in this country that seems to be what everyone holds most dear, even those who don’t seem like they do. And in the beginning, each successful scam was such a victory that I soon started thinking about bigger things. But I also understood from the start that if I was ever gonna have a chance to stay alive in the criminal world, I’d need an alias. So, I waited until I’d managed to create a completely separate person who could take the blame for all the stealing, before I went after my first big target.”

“What do you mean by a separate person?” she asks, when he pauses to move one of the stools to the other side of the island, so that he can sit opposite her.

“Another identity, but a ghost. Someone known only by name and voice, never seen, and entirely untraceable, both in person and online. He had no history and no future, he was just a voice on the phone, making demands. I called that ghost Mr. Hood, because I only ever stole money from those who could afford it, and I never took more than a small percentage of what they really had. And if it was an item I took, it was never expensive paintings or jewelry. Instead, I would trick people out of their comfort items. Things with sentimental value, as a way of punishing them for their cruelty.”

“Their cruelty?”

“Yes. I specifically targeted people who were secretly abusive or criminal, or just mean motherfuckers who trampled all over everyone around them just because they could. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that what I did was good, but I would never have taken from someone who was just going through life doing the best they could with as much humility and compassion as they could spare, no matter how much money they had. I wanted the crooks. I wanted to punish people for their indifference and lack of appreciation for their own fortunes, not to mention the people they crushed along the way.”

He stops himself there, because he’s getting riled up thinking about this. There are so many faces in his head. People who could’ve helped so many with their riches or their influence, but instead always did the opposite. The faces of his worst bullies from childhood flood his mind, and he closes his eyes against the painful memories. The beatings and the degradation. The constant public humiliation. If just one person had told them to stop-…

“So, basically an evil Robin Hood,” Gillian suggests, interrupting his downward spiral and drawing him back to the present.

He takes a calming breath, allowing her steady voice to chase away the sounds of his own bones breaking, etched into his memory bank forever.

“Maybe not evil,” he quietly counters, not at all sure if that’s true. “But definitely dark.”

“Hm. Well, given this place, I guess you were successful?” she ponders, and he nods.

“Very. There are way too many needlessly cruel people in the world.”

“You ever kill anyone?” she wonders, but the question isn’t accusatory.

“Yes. When you take on people associated with drug cartels and mafia’s, you kinda have to be ready to spill blood to protect yourself.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… You stole money from drug cartels?” she asks with a touch of disbelief, and when he nods again, her eyebrows hit the roof. “That’s ballsy…”

“Not really. Those were the easiest paydays, because my victims had nowhere to turn. With the average rich scumbag there was always the risk that they’d involve law enforcement, which I could handle since my alias was airtight and my own identity was never at risk, but it would also mean having to abandon the mark. Whereas with cartel members, if I could find a good enough fear or damaging enough secret, I could pin a person to a wall from which they had no escape in any direction. And best of all, who’s gonna believe that person when they try to explain to their boss that they were blackmailed into stealing the money, rather than pocketing it themselves?”

“Shit. You really did have your own little empire,” she concludes, leaning back in her seat with a mildly impressed look in her eyes.

“I’m not proud of it,” he admits, before getting up and turning his back to her while he pours himself a generous cup of the now finished beverage.

“Why?” she challenges. “What happened that made you change tracks and decide to become a factory worker?”

He doesn’t remember exactly when it had happened. When he’d decided that he was done with it, but he knows the reasoning behind it. It hadn’t been obvious to him even as he’d walked away from Mr. Hood and everything he’d built. Not until years later had the reasoning finally become clear to him. But neither then nor now does he know when that seed had first been planted in his mind.

“My own reflection,” he answers, staring down into the dark liquid, looking for a strength that it can’t give him. “Over time… seeing myself in the mirror got increasingly unpleasant. And it took me a long time to understand why, but I know now that it was because of how cold and dead my eyes had become. I looked at myself and I saw someone worse than the people who had hurt me, and even though I didn’t realize it right away, it scared me so much that I couldn’t keep going.”

It’s never made him feel stupid or less of a man to admit to himself that he went too far. But it does still make him feel guilty, which is why he won’t meet her eyes to find out what she’s thinking about him right now. Part of him has always wanted to tell Niki, but then, that would’ve meant changing the dynamic of their relationship, and he’s been too scared of losing the comforting simplicity between them, to dare take that step.

“And how does William fit into all this?” Gillian finally asks, and her lack of comments or further questions about his decision to walk away, gives Pero the confidence to look up at her again.

She still just looks curious. But this is a question that he can’t answer.

“You’ll have to ask him about that. It’s not my story to tell.”

With that, he decides that their conversation is over. For now, anyway. Niki’s been alone for at least half an hour already, and while she should be out of danger, he doesn’t feel good about leaving her without supervision for very long. There’s still a risk of delayed complications or other problems emerging. He takes his coffee and heads back to the bedroom, hearing no objections from the nurse, so he assumes that she’s satisfied with his answers for the time being.

To his surprise, Niki’s awake again when he steps in, so he closes the door behind him to give them some privacy. The room is so softly lit by how the daylight is filtered through the thick and richly green vegetation outside the windows, that she looks almost as though some masterful artist had painted her into existence.

“Hey. How are you?” he asks while approaching the bed.

“Still thirsty,” she replies, so he reaches for the glass of water with the straw, still standing on a tray on top of one of the monitors beside the bed.

He raises the backrest once again, and she drinks in slow but long gulps this time, until the glass is completely empty.

“More?” he asks, but she shakes her head.

“I’m good for now. Thank you.”

He sets the glass down and then takes a seat in the chair, leaving her sitting upright for a while to let the water settle into her stomach.

“What’s happened?” she asks after a minute, and he realizes that he’s taken her hand and that he’s fighting strong emotions that are trying to claw through his chest.

It’s a simple question, but he struggles to find an answer. Too much has happened, but not really around them, just inside of him. And how is he supposed to explain that when he doesn’t even understand it himself? He runs a hand over his face in frustration. He wishes that he could hug her. That he could crawl into that bed with her and beg her to hold him, cradle him until he falls asleep, because he’s so tired.

It’s only been two days, but he’s already exhausted in mind, spirit and body. How is he supposed to protect her when he can’t even stomach two fucking days of stress without crumbling into a nervous pile of uselessness?

“Pero? Talk to me.”

Her voice is soft, but there’s fear in it, and he hates hearing that.

“Someone I know showed up here this morning,” he says, bottling up his emotions and forcing himself to stay on track. To be useful. “His name’s William and he’s the one who helped me find out who’s after you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she counters, squeezing his hand to urge him to look at her, clearly seeing right through his attempt to be stoic.

He notices that her grip is getting strong again. She’s a mechanic, her hands have been calloused and sure for as long as he’s known her. Accustomed and comfortable working with metal tools and tightly wound nuts and bolts. And when he meets her eyes, he finds them every bit as piercing but gentle as they’ve always been when directed at him.

“I don’t know what to do…” he confesses, and all at once, the emotions he just buried are overpowering him again, even worse this time.

He pulls free of her hand, even though all he wants is to hold it tighter, and drops forwards in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head fall into his open hands while he fights against desperate sobs, only just managing to hold them back.

“I’m such a fucked up person, I don’t even have friends to ask for help! We’ve got an entire government and whole other country hunting us and the best I can do is run and hide because all I’ve got is myself,” he rambles, shaking his head between the fingers he’s digging into his scalp.

“Pero-…” she tries, but he cuts her off.

“Don’t get attached, don’t start caring, don’t let people manipulate you,” he rants, reciting the rules he’s lived by as if they’re some magical shield that’ll protect him against the pain which courses through him with each breath. “I’ve spent my whole life watching people say how much they love their friends and partners, only to use and manipulate and lie to them all the time! All the fucking time! Love isn’t real, that’s what I always believed. Because how could it be when no one… no one I ever met or observed, actually seemed to care that much about their supposed loved ones? So, why make friends when I know that they’ll only hurt me down the line? Why give a shit when no one else does?”

He pauses to wipe the tears from his eyes before they can fall. He’s not even sure why he’s crying, except for the pain. Which he also doesn’t know the real source of.

“I don’t know how people do it… how they can live so falsely and act so happy. I mean, I can’t say if I’ve ever been happy. I don’t think so. But at least I’ve never strung anyone along with promises of a great future together, only to turn around and shit on them. If that’s happiness then I don’t want it.”

He falls silent then, with a final big sigh, and leans back in his chair with his head still hanging low against his chest. Feeling defeated by the entire world, somehow.

“What do you want?” Niki asks then, and she sounds so careful.

As if the question alone has the power to break him. And given that he’s been thinking about this very thing all morning, without coming up with any answers, it doesn’t seem impossible that it might. Once again he tries to consider it. To put his life into perspective and search for the things that matter to him, along with the things that don’t. It shouldn’t be this hard to figure out, but it damned well is.

“I’ve been trying to work that out, but honestly… I still don’t know,” he admits, but it’s not good enough.

She deserves more effort than that, so he keeps talking, hoping that if he just spews out enough words, eventually the right ones will just fall out and make everything okay.

“I want you to live and be free, and I want the baby to live. I know that much. I’m just not sure why. What it means to me, you, or the baby. I don’t know if it means what you might want it to. Or if you even want me like that. We never talked about it, because it wasn’t supposed to happen, we weren’t supposed to be that to each other, but now everything’s upside down and because we never talked, we don’t know this shit, or anything about each other, and it’s all such a god damned mess.”

The words run out, so he just sits there, staring at his own hands, too cowardly to meet her gaze and find out what she thinks about what he’s saying. Not because he worries that she might not like what she hears, but because he worries that she’ll look indifferent. That he doesn’t matter to her at all. He’s never been concerned about her opinion of him before, since their relationship has never required her to like him, only trust him. Which she has.

But everything really is different now. And maybe he is too.

“Yo-…” she starts, but her voice seems to break under heavy emotions, and he can’t stop himself from looking up at her.

She looks almost heartbroken, and it sends daggers through him.

“You want the baby to live?” she continues, and she sounds so incredulous.

As though she can’t imagine that he would actually want that. Which would mean that her heartbreak is rooted in hope rather than fear. That she wants to believe that he could love their child at least, if not her.

“Yes, but…” he tries, and sees her breath hitch when he doesn’t continue.

“But, what?” she prompts, and her voice is shaking now.

“But…” he tries again, knowing what he needs to say, but afraid of what she’ll think. “Fuck. Look, I’m not a good person, I think a part of you knows that. And even though I’d like to think that I could be a worthwhile dad, I really don’t think I can.”

Never before has he worried or even cared about being judged by others. The opinions of liars and betrayers and abusers have never mattered to him, and that’s what everyone around him has always looked like to his eyes. Nikita is an exception, but only because he’s chosen not to look too closely at her. He’s never observed her. Never tried to know her, because if he’d found her to be like the rest, that would’ve ruined his ability to look at her as someone desirable.

He knows now that she has lied for large portions of her life, although as far as he’s aware, only out of patriotism and necessity, which he can accept. But he still doesn’t know what else she is or has done. If she’s like the rest overall. And he isn’t sure that he wants to know. But more than that, what plagues him is the knowledge that he’s no better than anyone of them. Equally unworthy of love since he’s never once offered his to anyone.

“So, in other words, you want me to have the baby. Alone?” she counters, and she sounds upset now, so he thinks carefully before he answers.

“I just want you to have the option. To not be forced in any direction, by anyone or for any reason, but least of all by me, because I’m not… I can’t be trusted with something like this.”

“And what if you’re the only reason that I want to make that choice at all?” she ponders, still sounding upset, but also sad.

Her words truly stun him, though. He sits frozen for a while, just staring dumbly at her, before he finds his voice.

“But… I’m an asshole.”

“Maybe, but not to me. I might not know anything about you, but I know that you’ve never treated me like a piece of meat. I know that I’ve never had to fear that you’d be offensive for no reason or pick a fight because you’ve had a bad day. You’ve always been kind to me. Even now, when that means putting your life on the line. Why would I not want to share this with you? You’re the best guy I’ve ever known.”

If that’s true, then she must’ve known only the worst of mankind, which he doesn’t quite believe. But he also wonders if her current circumstances could be tainting her perspective of him, subconsciously putting him in the place of a knight in shining armor, when he’s really as far from that as anyone could be.

“If I hadn’t thrown you out that evening, is that what you would’ve told me?” he challenges, and her expression shifts, from sadness to retrospection.

“That’s impossible to answer since it would depend entirely on what you would’ve said. If all this hadn’t happened, would you even have let me talk to you again after that evening?”

Crap. He hangs his head again, because she’s right. He probably wouldn’t have given her the light of day. More likely, he would’ve avoided her at all costs, hoping to not have to deal with the baby at all. And if that was true then, then it still is now. Just hidden behind the fear of Niki dying for no fucking reason. Except…

“…that’s not right either…” he mumbles, finishing the thought out loud.

“What’s not right?” she asks, understandably confused since she hasn’t heard his internal reasoning.

He looks up at her once more, somehow feeling like he’s seeing her for the first time all over again. Christ, she really is beautiful.

“I’m terrified of losing you,” he confesses, and sees her features instantly soften. “Not because of any need to right my wrongs against you or because I just don’t wanna lose the closest thing I have to a friend. I’m terrified because I need you. Because the thought of having to bury yo-…”

Even finishing that sentence is too painful. The words are strangled in the depths of his throat while the unwanted image of a headstone and freshly closed grave flashes before his eyes. Disturbed by the sight, he jolts to his feet and begins pacing, alternating between crossing his arms and restlessly fiddling with his shirt, or scratching his neck or running a hand through his hair, all while rambling uncontrollably.

“I never let myself go there, because no one ever means it, it’s always just empty words, so why would I be any different? Me, the guy who’s actively avoided all attachments all my life, becoming a criminal and a thief and a god damned vigilante because I just can’t trust people. So, why didn’t I see it from the start? Why the fuck didn’t I see it?! I trusted you. From day one, I trusted you. How could I not see that it was because I wanted it to mean something? Because I wanted you to be the exception… the one that might say it and mean it. Even to me.”

He stops moving. He’s right at the foot of her bed. Nikita Morse. The woman he doesn’t want to live without. The woman he dares to care about, even though he doesn’t know her. The only person in the world… that he loves. Turning slowly, he meets her gaze, and there are tears running her cheeks. Just like there had been that night, when she’d fled the anger that she had never deserved, but which she’d shouldered so gracefully all the same.

“I will,” she whispers. “When this is over, I’ll say it… and if you believe me, you say it back. Deal?”

Stepping around the foot of the bed, he goes to her side and leans over to kiss her instead of making some bland verbal promise. He’s never just kissed her before. Only while having sex, only as a gesture of passion, never to express care or affection. This feels different. Like a spark moving from his lips into his blood, where it can course through him endlessly. It feels wonderful. Until he remembers that this might not be over for a very long time, and that it might very well end with their deaths.

“You hungry?” he asks, trying to distract himself and noticing that it’s getting close to lunchtime.

His voice is thick with emotions much deeper than anything he’s ever felt, but it’s strangely not as crippling as fear or as paralyzing as lost hope. Instead, it feels empowering. Suddenly the idea that an entire government is on their tails seems less like an insurmountable obstacle and more like a climbing challenge. How the fuck does that happen?

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I’ll be constantly hungry for weeks to come yet,” she tries to joke to get the weight of the world off her chest, while wiping her tears away.

“Okay, I’ll go see what I can make for you,” he says, gently squeezing her lower arm before he leaves, hoping she’ll take it as a comforting gesture.

Returning to the kitchen, he finds Gillian in the process of finishing a chicken soup.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he offers when she looks up from stirring the pot.

“I know, but between you protecting us and keeping an eye on Nikita, and William doing his part researching the bad guys, I kinda ran out of ways to be useful.”

“Well, don’t worry, pretty soon you’re gonna be wishing you had less to do,” Pero cautions, and she stops stirring.

“What do you mean?”

She’s been around him long enough now to know that when he warns her about something, it’s generally life and death level serious.

“We can’t just sit here and wait for someone to find us. Eventually we’ll run out of food, but I suspect we’ll go crazy before that.”

“You’re leaving?” she asks, and she doesn’t sound happy about the prospect.

“We need allies. Eyes and ears outside of this place, people that can warn us if our enemy is approaching. And we can’t find any by sitting around out here,” he explains.

He can see that she realizes the truth of what he’s saying, but she seems worried about the prospect of not having him around. She takes the pot off the plate and turns off the stove before turning to face him, and by then there are tears in her eyes, which surprises him.

“You’re the only here that won’t crack under the threat of death. You can’t leave,” she pleads, but her words confuse him.

“Gillian… you’re every bit as tough as I am.”

“No,” she shakes her head firmly. “I’m not even close. I’ve been fraying at the seams ever since the hospital, I just never stopped long enough to let myself think about it. Yeah, I’m a trauma nurse and I’ve seen some bad shit in the few years I’ve been doing it, but putting myself in between patients and bullets… actually preparing to gas people to death… No. I’m not cut out for any of this.”

She’s about ready to curl into a ball and give up. He can see that in her eyes and the sudden tremors in her hands, and he doesn’t blame her one bit. Niki’s doing good, so technically there’s no need for her to stay, and he was never going to force her to, no matter what.

“Then take the truck and go back to town,” he repeats himself from the first night.

She had rejected the idea then, but he can see that it hits her differently now. That she wants to go. But she also knows herself. The tears have begun to fall, and she swipes at them with frustration as she starts rummaging through cupboards in search of a good bowl to serve the soup in. It isn’t pride or even duty that keeps her from taking him up on it. Just humanity. Just a stark unwillingness to leave them all and save herself, because that guilt would be worse than anything to her.

But the fear is still there regardless, eating away at her, leaving her nervous and angry, stealing her joy and positivity, forcing her mind into dark places that only serve to increase her anxiousness. He might not have ever wanted or sought friendship, but he knows what it looks like. And for the most part, it doesn’t seem to matter whether someone’s intentions are genuine or not, the gestures of comfort usually appear to be enough.

So, since he feels responsible for Gillian’s situation, he steps closer to her and stops her nearly frantic search, by pulling her into a hug. She’s not even shocked by it. Too desperate for the comfort it brings, she instantly abandons her efforts and lets him hold her while she allows herself to fall apart for a few moments.

He’s struck by how small she feels when she curls in on herself between his arms, trembling and sniveling. She’s such an impressive person. By his standards, at least. It seems contradictory that she should be so small when she carries such enormous things within her. But true to her character, she only allows herself a brief respite. Pulling away and resuming her task after no more than a minute.

He reaches into the correct cupboard and takes out a perfect sized bowl for a portion of soup, which he hands to her without a word. She’s looked through that cupboard in her search, but was too overwhelmed to absorb anything she saw, which is why she now feels foolish. He doesn’t tell her not to, because that won’t help. Instead, he turns to leave, giving her space to feel whatever she needs to.

“Thank you,” she says before he steps out of her view, and he stops and turns halfway to look at her.

“I owe you everything, Gillian. Don’t ever forget that I’m just a weapon. It’s you who are the hero of this story,” he says, and then turns away and heads upstairs.

The computer system takes up the entire desk, and huddled in between the screens, cables and fan-assisted operating systems and hard drives, is a deeply concentrating William. Pero has seen him work before, so the image isn’t unfamiliar to him, but the worried crease in the veteran’s forehead is something new. Which says something about how much of a mess they’re really in.

“Any updates?”

Unlike many other computer experts, Will’s time in the military has left him incapable of getting so immersed in the digital world that he loses touch with the reality around him, so it’s actually really hard to sneak up on him. He doesn’t flinch or react to Pero’s voice at all, because he’s already heard him coming up the stairs.

“Yeah, we’re definitely dealing with China. But not government. It looks more like some private radical with enough funds to finance a small war.”

“Great,” Tovar sighs and sinks into a reading chair. “That makes this so much easier.”

The sarcasm is partially lost in the fatigue, and he runs a hand over his face while he tries to think through how this information might change his course of action going forwards.

“At least it’s not another fucking country on our tails,” Garin points out, and he’s right, that would’ve been worse.

“True. But if it had been, we would’ve been able to work out the players, whereas with a private force, there’s no telling who or how many people stand between us and freedom.”

“Now you’re being offensive,” Will tuts. “I’ll have that information by the end of the day.”

“Seriously? These jackasses are dumb enough to leave a digital trail?”

“Not an obvious one, no. But they’re using a cleverly concealed chatroom, masquerading as a social media DM thread, to communicate, and once I break the encryption, we’ll know everything they’re doing. I should even be able to backtrace their locations and set up a real-time tracking system. It’s our homegrown jackasses that are proving to be a bigger issue.”

“How come?”

“Well… I suspect it’s the abundance of resources. Satellites and drone surveillance, probably an entire farm of hackers all focusing their efforts on us, not to mention thousands of boots on the ground to run down all leads and eliminate false trails.”

“Right,” Pero grumbles, already feeling defeated.

“Hey,” William calls his attention, looking up from the screens and meeting his eyes as he continues. “Don’t give up yet. We might not have an army, but that doesn’t mean we’re not dangerous. They’re already scared of us, and we can use that.”

“Yeah, I know. I just also know that this isn’t gonna end without bloodshed, one way or another.”

“Probably not. So, what’s your plan? Cause I know you’re cooking up something, your head’s far too big to not have turned and looked all this over a dozen times already.”

“More like a hundred,” Pero corrects. “But I keep coming back to one inescapable fact: we need better numbers. Allies.”

“Okay, so how are you gonna find some?”

“Doing what I always do. I’m gonna make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

Will doesn’t look particularly happy about that, but then, he’s been at the receiving end of that offer, and it didn’t work out so well for him.

“Don’t you mean threaten them?” he says quietly, and while there’s a hint of defiance in his eyes, he looks mostly scared. “Cause I can promise you, that’s how it feels.”

But Tovar isn’t offended or rattled by that statement. The veteran is probably correct, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’d gotten himself into the shit that had followed, after Pero’s threat.

“Yeah, that’s the point. If you hadn’t been a selfish bastard who cared more about the one percent of your money that I took, your fiancé would’ve been alive today,” he coldly replies, because he’s tired of Will’s endless attempts to make him feel guilty about their past. “And the really sad part about all this is that I already know I’m not gonna have any trouble finding skeletons I can use under the rocks that our intended assassins are sitting on, because that’s the fucking norm. But hey, why don’t I ask them nicely? Maybe they’ll agree not to kill us out of the goodness of their hearts.”

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Part 6

Thank you for reading, and remember: I have no taglist anymore. Follow @sirowsky-stories and turn on notifications for updates on my writing :)

#pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal #pero tovar #pero tovar fanfiction #the great wall

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bilibiche · 10 days

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Reblog if you think a woman can be complete without children

Y’ALL HAVE TIME TO REBLOG THIS. IT TAKES LESS THAN FIVE SECONDS.

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bilibiche · 13 days

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Well said!

I didn't think I had a comfort character until it struck me today that I do, 'Pedro Pascal'.

I have this version of him that exists in this space. It's based on second-hand tales and assumptions from interviews and photographs. It's a character that I've made by weaving all these things together.

He brings me comfort as a beacon of how people should be when they have a platform. Grateful, humble, respectful, and an ally to those who don't have their voice easily heard.

That character will always bring me great comfort, and I wish the man I've drawn inspiration from nothing but happiness.

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bilibiche · 16 days

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If [insert pedro boy here] had to sign karaoke, what song would they pick?

#pedro boys #pedro pascal characters

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bilibiche · 17 days

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Because I wanted you to be the exception… the one that might say it and mean it. Even to me.

Oh Pero... 🥰🥰🥰🥰