May 2007, Secret Codes and Signs

[ellectrical]

It's three more days before that jackass comes back.

All she can steal from his refrigerator are a few plastic bags of fruit and a carton of orange juice. She doesn't want to leave unless she risks her way back in, and though she attempts a few tries at opening the doors available, none of them leads to the Bar. There's a plastic bag of Trefoils in her purse, and she spends the time looking through the books on his shelf (most of them in French), making notes in her notebook, and emptying the room of anything that could be used against her when the time comes. She allows herself sleep, but only short naps, and only on the wood floor, next to the door. Elle doesn't let herself check the window on the off-chance that she'll see him returning.

It doesn't matter. She picks out his footsteps from among the others as they approach in the mid-afternoon lull between those leaving from lunch and those returning for the night. These are steady, not rushed or otherwise impeded, no sense of urgency to finally be home, but also light with the kind of soft pacing of someone who doesn't want to be heard. Of course, he'd never wanted to be heard at all, not in a way that could betray anything about himself. That, at least, Elle was expecting.

Her purse is left on the table under the window. Elle draws her gun from beneath her leather jacket, keeping her own steps quiet as she moves to the wall right of the door. She doesn't unlock and level the gun until she hears the lock in the door turn, and click.

The door is pushed forward, only slightly, but it's enough. She can see him - tall, white shirt and brown leather jacket rather than the suits most Company agents chose, and black cord necklace over his throat. Unlike most, he had no cover, no one to pretend for - it was easier to hide when no one knew to look. He moves his right hand into his own jacket.

"Stop."

The creak of the door is what stops first. Its whine slows and fades, and his hand stills, his eyes now on her.

"Get in."

His eyes flicker away, back down the hall, and her grip on her gun tightens.

"Don't." Her voice is low. No one ever has much leverage with him, but now, Elle knows what she wants. And that it can only work one way.

"You know I won't care about killing you now."

(It's not as though she's the first ex-Company agent that he's encountered.)

He doesn’t test her. Without meeting her eyes again, he pushes the door open, and steps through. Before he can close it again, Elle advances on him.

"Put your hands on the wall."

Her presence didn't get it, but at this his eyes do widen, very briefly. Still without speaking, he moves away from the door, and turns to the wall next to it. Elle closes the door herself. Her gun stays level as she moves to him, her eyes more on his hands than anything else. It helps that she knows exactly where to look – she doesn't really have to search to find his gun, the standard issue in its standard shoulder holster. She yanks it out.

He still doesn't speak as she steps back, his gun lowered in her left hand. She motions with it at her side, in the direction of the kitchen.

"Go sit."

Again, it gets the very faint, yet just slightly surprised reaction, though this time it may hint more toward curiosity. He turns his back on her (if she'd wanted to kill him, she could have done it already) and makes no motion to the drawers and cupboards she'd already emptied as he moves to the solitary chair. She keeps her gun on him anyway, as she walks to the tale under the window, and sets his down next to her purse. With her now free left hand, she sifts through the bag, until her fingers clench around what's now a very worn, well-folded piece of paper.

This in hand, she walks to the table, standing not across from him, but to the side. The piece of paper is flattened over the table in front of him, in the square of sunlight that comes through the window above the sink.

It's a list. The handwriting isn't hers.

"Does that look right?"

His eyes flicker to the paper. Elle's attention continues to stay on his hands, now flat on the table – his fingers inch barely closer to the slip of paper she'd placed in front of him. He doesn't look back up to her.

"I do not know what this is."

And he's betting that she doesn't, either. It's the right move, even if it aggravates her. But it won't work now.

"The first says November." She doesn't even motion toward the paper. Her gun stays level on him, and she doesn't move any closer than she has to. "In 1991. That's when I turned nine. Do you remember it?"

He still doesn't answer, doesn't even shift or move at all. She remembers the day after, seeing him. They said they'd just found him, alone in Port-au-Prince. He was fourteen. Only spoke in crayon drawings, but they'd long since known that was a lie. It didn't matter – they didn't need him to speak very often.

They didn't need her to speak very often, either – she just did anyway. Even at fourteen, he was the closest anyone else had come to growing up in the Company.

Because I trusted him.

Elle's voice is cold. "Because I don't."

Finally, he looks up, and meets her eyes again.

"Who told you?"

Her mouth sets. For one quick moment, she considers lying, but –

"Your partner."

His head tilts down again, and his eyes look back to the piece of paper. This time, he reaches out for it – Elle takes one step back as he does, but his attention stays on the writing. He touches each written date with his finger, without so much as murmuring, before he looks up to her.

"What do you want, Elle?"

"I want you to say it," she lies. "That you took what my Dad did to me." Her left hand jerks toward the paper. "Like that."

His eyes stay on hers.

"Yes."

It's Elle who looks away first, though not so much that he's ever out of her line of sight. She takes another step back, her gun still trained on him.

"Might've just slammed my head into a wall and saved yourself some time." It's dull, not even really close to angry. He doesn't answer, instead moving to fold the paper in half, and slide it to the other side of the table. But Elle continues, "Then why – I'm not fainting or forgetting –"

"You used to," he murmurs. "When it interfered with your work, they found a procedure to reduce your reliance on your temporal lobe."

"When?"

He looks down to the piece of paper, and points to a date in 1998. The year she turned sixteen – her father had finally allowed her to grow out her hair. What she says next can only follow from his answer.

"And then you made me forget that, too," Elle replies, her voice flat.

"Yes," he repeats.






"Elle, what do you want?"

Her shoulders flinch, but her right hand stays still. This time, she doesn't lie.

"I want what you took."

He sighs and leans back against the chair, his eyes wandering to the far window. They pause there for a moment – maybe he's just noticed the wind chime. "You know I cannot do that."

She did. That's not how his power works. Elle had told herself that, come to terms with it, tried to find ways around it. She knew before she came to him that he wouldn't even be able to give it back to her.

"Then just –" For the first time, her voice gets louder, and shakes just slightly over the next word. " – tell me –"

"Even if I could return it to you, I wouldn't."





In this room, the burst of honesty cuts through the air like gunfire, with every echo and reverberation even though the only real sound is the traffic in the Queens neighborhood below his windows. Elle still doesn't falter, but her grip on the gun is tight enough to make her knuckles pale. His eyes on hers, maybe mere acknowledgment a moment ago, is nothing less than a mutual threat – and neither slips.

"What they did to you," he continues, slowly, his voice low, "you could not recover from."

And I thought my little girl was tough. A vicious part of Elle's mind can't help from lashing out at it. Guess you were wrong about that, Dad. But she doesn't break eye contact, not even briefly, and it seems to coax him to continue.

"We are not meant to go through that. When you had those memories, you were – you would not even speak –"

Elle loses. She glances briefly, to the ceiling, and he stops.

For a moment.

"This was to fix you."


lock it from the inside
she is like me
got her on a
didn't want her to become
I'm not giving up on you
takes one to know one



Fixed. This was fixed. She doesn't scoff, can't even manage so much as a mirthless laugh. Crazy, sadistic, sociopath with -

"Great job," she mutters. He doesn't waver; his hand even rises barely an inch from the table, but immediately flattens against it once again when he seems to realize what he's doing – or sees the way her grip on her gun tightens at his movement.

"What you are now is still more than what you were when they were done with you."

I made you tougher than -



Elle slaps her left hand down on the table, pulling the piece of paper back against her palm and crumpling it once again between her fingers. He doesn't flinch, and she steps way, turning slightly, though she never loses him in her line of sight, or the point of her gun.

"It's mine," she answers, roughly, as she heads for the other window. "I'm going to get it back."

"Then I won't be responsible for what will happen if you do."

This makes her pause as she's reaching for her purse. For the first time, her expression shifts, her lips curling into what barely brushes a smile.

"You want to be responsible for what I'll do instead?"

When he doesn't answer, she adds, shoving the paper and his gun in her bag, "It's just about healing the damage."

He stands from the chair.

"You won't go after Bennet."

Elle scoffs as she pulls the strap of the purse over her left shoulder. Her voice is so dismissive that it doesn't even sound like a threat. "Watch me."

It's only half a bluff, which should be enough for him to catch it. Whatever risk there is seems to outweigh this, however, and he takes a step toward her, despite the gun still leveled at him.

"Even you are not that stupid. Elle, he's –"

"You know it's not his, right?" she interrupts.

Now, she really is smiling. He doesn't try to come closer to her, or to stop her as she twists, and walks backward toward the door. But as she's turning the lock with her left hand, he calls –

"Elle, you were not there, you don't know what you were like –"

It's another burst of honesty. Both are so unused to it that again, the room stills for a moment. Elle even stops turning the lock.

we'd all want to call it a day, but -


When she finally has the voice for it:

"I wasn't there?"

Once again, he falls back into silence. This time, she can understand why he'd do it so often – it was probably easier when you didn't have to explain, whether that meant lying or just not letting yourself be so stupid as to tell the truth. Not even allowing so much as your name to give you away.

And Elle can't help but think that maybe he has the right idea.

She finishes with the lock, and her hand moves to the doorknob.

"You were doing your job," Elle tells him. This was never about revenge. That's a notion she can barely comprehend. He did his job. She did hers. That was all there was.

"But it's over – if it happens again, even if I don't know it –"

She takes a step forward, pulling the door open behind her back.

" – someone will."







Half an hour later, she's checked out of her motel.