Chapter Text
There is nothing Ada can say that will make everything alright.
Sitting on the stairs, looking down at the pool of blood on Grace’s floor and Grace laying next to it, Ada lets her mind spool in black thread, back to the beginning.
It was raining. It hadn’t stopped for weeks, a downpour that kept coming no matter how many curses were hurled at the sky or scowls sent drowning in puddles swirling with gasoline rainbows.
The moment that Grace Ashcroft rolled down her car window and looked out at Ada with eyes like a kicked puppy, the whole plan went to shit.
The order was simple: kill Grace Ashcroft.
So Ada stages a little car trouble in the dead of the night. She read the report. She knows Ashcroft is two degrees from a shut in. She works, she works some more, then she goes home. Maybe she stops for take out on the way. Better yet, maybe she stops for a damsel in distress, all alone with a flat tire and oh no…no spare to replace it.
If Ashcroft were a man, Ada would have dressed the part. There’s nothing more that men love than a woman in a thin dress in the rain. But Grace is not a man, and she is skittish to boot, if her psyche profile is to be trusted. So Ada dresses comfortably, in a coat and a warm scarf and sturdy boots.
She shoves a nail into her tire. And just in case Agent Ashcroft is the prepared sort, she puts a knife blade through her radiator for good measure.
Golly, gosh. Doesn’t she just have the worst luck?
Rain kisses the face of her watch as she glances down, checking the time.
She slips glasses over her eyes just as she catches headlights further down the road. Pops her hood, curving her hands around her eyes as she stares down at the engine with as much consternation as she can manage.
Come on come on come on.
The car approaching slows, tires slinging rain and rocks and Ada hears the sound of a window rolling down. Red lights blink across the black pavement, the hazard lights on.
“Hey!” The voice is young, hesitant. “Do you want help?”
Ada pulls her hands from her eyes, letting the rain get in them, blinking rapidly. She moves towards the car, but keeps her distance - women are wary of strangers, after all, and it’s best to not look too confident.
The uncertain smile on her lips feels natural and she hopes it looks that way as she leans down, peering into the front seat.
Miss Puppy Dog Eyes herself peers out just as uncertainly, with concern and a frown between her eyebrows. She still wears her field jacket, beaded wet with water droplets, her hair darkened to honey blonde from the rain. She has the kind of eyes that make Ada wonder if maybe people have souls after all.
“I can’t believe you stopped in this rain,” Ada says, blinking rapidly as she glances up into the sky. “I guess I should have caved and bought a new car ages ago, but, you know.”
“Let me take a look,” Grace says.
Ada watches as Grace pulls forward, turning in and parking in front of her. She has a lit flashlight in her hand when she gets out, and a baseball cap pulled low against the rain. She still wears her ID badge around her neck, but no weapons that Ada can spot.
“Okay, ow,” Ada says as Grace shines the flashlight directly into her eyes.
“S-Sorry,” Grace says, and points the flashlight away. She gestures at Ada’s open hood. “Can I look?”
“Would you? I’m a mess with these things.”
She could do it there, on the side of the road.
Ada thinks about it, watching Grace lean in to shine her light down into the guts of the car. She notes the perfect spot just under the edge of jaw, a pale bit of skin that jumps with her pulse. It would be easy to slip a blade in, hold her while she bleeds out. It would be quick, but maybe not quick enough. Ada doesn’t want her to suffer. It’s just business.
She thinks about the gun tucked against the small of her back.
It would be like a lamb in spring slaughter - a little blood, a little brain, a little innocence lost.
It doesn’t seem right somehow. Leaving her on the side of the road like trash, alone in the rain, no one to hold her hand through the dark night until the sad bleed of a morning missing one more person.
“You must have the worst luck,” Grace is saying, squinting at Ada’s flat tire. “Did you call a tow?”
Ada nods. “About a five hour wait. All the rain.”
Grace shifts, frowning, uncertain as she edges a look up at Ada’s face. She glances down at her watch, shakes her head. “That’s forever. And it’s late. I know I’m a stranger, but I live right up the road. Look, I work for the FBI. You can trust me.”
She is so earnest as she shows Ada her badge, and so naive. Some of the most corrupt people Ada has ever seen sucking air were in lofty places in the hallowed halls of the FBI.
Don’t trust anyone, she wants to tell her.
Ada doesn’t waste her breath. She is going to kill her, after all.
“You’re so nice,” she says instead, playing dumb as she looks down at Grace’s ID, hunching her shoulders against the rain. “You’re really a cop?”
“Uh, not a cop. I work for the FBI. I’m a data analyst.”
“Wow. That’s intense.”
Grace swallows uncertainly, her eyes darting from Ada to the ground and back again.
“Well,” Ada says, turning on the full wattage of her smile. “If you promise you’re not a serial killer.”
It’s unfortunate when your murder victim is pathetically cute when they blush, and that’s what Grace is - pathetically cute. Like a little drowned cat, dripping wet and oh so needy for the right hand.
“I, um, promise,” Grace says.
Car doors slam as they both slip inside of Grace’s car. Grace shivers and rubs her hands quickly together before she cranks up the heat, angling the vent in Ada’s direction. It’s such an oddly sweet thing to do that Ada can’t help but frown.
She drinks her coffee black. She hates sweetness. Indulgence shows a weakness of character, a lack of discipline.
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about tasting it. Sometimes she even dreams about it.
Grace’s hand brushes against Ada’s shoulder as she reaches into the back seat, retrieving a folded towel from the backseat.
“Here,” she says, offering it to Ada. “I haven’t used it.”
Ada takes the towel. She pulls off her rain blurred glasses, meeting Grace’s eyes as she touches the towel to her hair.
“You really have it all figured out, huh?” Ada says. She allows a little of her real voice to slip out, unable to help herself, wanting to see the other woman flush again.
Grace feels the back of her neck get hot and her cheeks burn as she meets the stranger’s eyes. She couldn’t see them in the rain, but inside, wrapped up in the sound of rain drumming on the metal roof, she sees they are dark, so dark she can’t see her pupils. It guards her, that darkness, shields her from Grace’s gaze.
Somehow, Grace bets that if the sunlight hit them just right, those brown eyes would glow like melted chocolate.
“I’m Grace,” she offers, watching the other woman pat her hair dry.
“Ada,” she says, and holds out her hand.
Ada’s hand is warm despite the cold rain, and surprisingly strong. Grace gets the sense she is trying to be gentle, but doesn’t quite know how.
“You’re a really nice person,” Ada says, staring steadily into Grace’s eyes. She doesn’t let go of her hand.
Grace feels something catch in her throat as she swallows. “You say it like it’s a bad thing.”
Ada’s eyes slip along Grace’s face, accessing her, cataloguing her. She releases Grace’s hand and leans back in her seat. She has a unique way of sitting, in a contradiction of an elegant slouch.
“Nice people get taken advantage of,” Ada replies, and Grace tries not to think about the smooth timbre to her voice, like oiled wood. “That’s all.”
It’s an odd thing to say, but the whole night has been strange.
Maybe it’s the rain.
Grace kicks her shoes off at the door, flicking on a light as she tosses her keys onto a nearby table. Her shoulders shrug out of her jacket and she drapes it over the back of a chair, a towel already ready on the floor to catch the water sliding off the back and sleeves. She tosses her hat in the direction of the couch.
Ada moves carefully, but effortlessly, Grace notes. She wonders if she is a dancer.
“You can put your coat over mine,” Grace offers, and watches as Ada does. She’s wearing a dark sweater underneath. It looks warm, and soft to the touch. “Are you hungry?”
Ada smiles at Grace. It’s edged, the hint of mocking, like Grace amuses her. “I’m okay. Could I use your bathroom, though?”
“Yeah, um, sure. Up those stairs, to the left. Tiny door on the right.”
The door is indeed tiny.
Ada looks around as she shuts the door behind herself. She doesn’t bother to lock it, she knows where Grace is. Downstairs, probably nervously chewing through her nails.
Bathrooms are strange things. You learn a lot about a person. Do they have spare toilet paper, or are they a, til it’s down to the clinging piece at the end, kind of person? Electric or regular toothbrush? Is there floss in the trashcan? Do they actually clean their shower?
Grace flosses, and there is one shred of what was once toilet paper clinging to the brown cardboard roll dangling off its holder.
Ada shakes her head.
That kind of chaos is senseless in its violence.
There’s a small window set high into the shower wall. It looks out into the street, Ada notes, her eyes shifting back and forth as she gets a nose over the window ledge.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket.
“Do you need something?” She asks, answering the call with a narrowing of her eyes.
“Why isn’t she dead?” The voice is deep, male. Faceless. Just the way he likes it.
“I just got here,” Ada smiles at herself in the mirror, leaning in to check the line of her lipstick. “You in a rush or something?”
She hears him inhale, sucking smoke deep into his mouth, rolling it out in clouds between his lips.
“If you were going to kill her, you would have.”
There’s a clump in her mascara. She dabs at it with Grace’s final shred of toilet paper, blinking at herself in the mirror.
“You think so?” She asks.
“There’s always someone else willing to do the dirty work.”
The call ends.
Ada feels satisfied with her reflection. She tucks her phone into her pocket and reaches behind her back, pulling out the Blacktail she holstered there.
She is flicking off the safety when she hears it, a shatter of glass. Followed by a cry, the sound of feet scuffling - a burst, one short gunshot. Something heavy thuds to the floor.
Ada holds the Blacktail down at her side. Her fingers shift on the grip and she thinks about Grace laying downstairs, bleeding out on the rug.
Motherfuckers.
She comes out of the door quick, moving down the hallway and swinging right, down the stairs, barrel first.
She is halfway down when she catches movement and nearly shoots Grace in the head.
Grace is red faced and wild eyed, swinging her own gun up to point at Ada’s shoulder.
“Drop it!” Grace screams and Ada can tell she means it. “And tell me who the fuck you are!”
Ada raises her hands, but doesn’t let go of her gun.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Ada says, keeping her voice gentle, measured. Maintaining eye contact. It’s harder to kill someone when you can see their eyes seeing you back.
“I asked you who you are!” Grace doesn’t lower her gun or her blood pressure.
There’s a crunch of glass, and Ada sees a man stepping from the living room, behind Grace. She swings her gun up instinctively, needing only one shot and 2 seconds to blow a hole through the side of his neck, his blood dribbling out with an odd kind of pressure as his body goes slack and he falls, beautifully dead.
The problem is, Grace doesn’t realize there is a murderer behind her. So when Ada swings her gun up, she is sure she aims at her and her finger squeezes off a round, catching Ada in the meat of her shoulder, slamming her into the wall behind her. Her blood is dark as she smears down the white paint slowly, sitting down heavily on the stair below her.
“You fucking shot me,” Ada says. She looks from Grace to the blood blooming darkly under her sweater. She begins to feel it, and the sudden pain of it makes her feel woozy, like she might throw up.
Grace stands on the floor below, holding her head in hands, surrounded by two dead bodies and more blood than she has ever seen in her life.
Ada gags, and finally pukes. She coughs, swiping the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Fuck,” she says. “My lipstick.”
A line of sweat runs down Grace’s neck. She turns to look at Ada. She is pale faced and her lipstick is smudged. Somehow, she still manages to look good covered in blood, as if she was made to hurt, and in doing her purpose, is the more beautiful for it.
“Your lipstick looks great.” Grace means it.
Ada doesn’t care that it’s a lie. “Can I have a towel, please?”
Grace gives a start, rapidly sucked back into reality like a vacuum of space abruptly closed. She runs to the kitchen, but slips in something slick, falling back first into a pool of dark, congealing blood. Blood is all over her when she stands, sticky and disturbingly cold on her skin. She rips a dish towel off the oven handle and snatches a roll of paper towels off the counter, stumbling towards Ada on the stairs.
Ada cries out when Grace presses the towel into her wound, pressing hard to stem the hot flow of blood.
Ada squeezes her eyes shut, banging a fist against the wooden stairs.
She grits her teeth, tasting blood on her cheek.
If it hurts, it’s working.
“Sorry sorry sorry sorry,” Grace says frantically, but doesn’t lessen her force. “We have to stop the bleeding.”
Ada shakes her head. “No. We need to leave. Right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ada seizes Grace’s chin, forcing her to hold still and meet her eyes. If she weren’t bleeding to death, she might like the submissive little part of Grace’s lips at her touch. “I said, we need to leave. Right now.”
Grace’s eyes dart back and forth between Ada’s, trying to get a read on her, and finding her unfathomable.
“Okay,” Grace says after a long pause. “Where?”
“Give me your phone.”
Grace does, unlocking it. Ada leaves her blood on the screen as she types an address into Google Maps.
“Here,” she says, handing the phone back to Grace. “No matter what. Even if I lose consciousness. Get me inside. Put me on the bed. Wrap this thing up and give me time. I’ll wake up.”
“I can take you to a hospital -”
Ada doesn’t tighten her grip, but she hardens her gaze, and she sees Grace’s reaction in the widening of her pupils.
“We’ve been over this,” Ada says. “Can you please help me to your car?”
Supporting Ada’s slumping form, all Grace can grab are her keys and the roll of paper towels. She doesn’t bother locking the door. Two dead bodies cooling on the living room floor should scare off any burglars.
Ada is gone by the time Grace buckles her into the passenger’s seat of the car. Passed out and limp. Grace rushes to the driver’s side, skidding over the wet hood and tumbling inside of the car. She frantically rips off a thick wad of paper towels, pressing them to Ada’s shoulder, but they quickly soak through red.
There’s nothing else in reach, so she quickly pulls her t-shirt over the top of her head, shivering in the cold as she covers Ada’s wound.
Her hand is shaking so badly she can barely get the key in ignition. Notwithstanding the awkward angle of putting pressure on Ada’s shoulder at the same time.
She sighs when the car starts, reaching over to put it in gear with her left hand. Her fingers fumble with the heat dial. Her teeth are beginning to chatter, whether from the cold or the shock, she doesn’t know.
She glances down at the phone in her lap, tracing their path.
What the fuck, she thinks, shaking her head, and she disappears into the night in a ghostly red trail of rain drenched tail lights.