February, 2013
"And I'll take some of that bottled water," Mallory said, examining her list and making sure she'd picked up the essentials. She already had most of her gear together, but supplies like food and water had to be stocked up on before she left civillization behind. Being a Council field operative was hardly a holiday, but she enjoyed the work and the travelling was interesting.
This time it was Yellowknife, out in the Northwest Territories of Canada. There had been vague reports of a new breed of demon living out there, and she was on her way out to the site to do some camping and check things out. If it was bad enough, she'd call for backup to take care of the problem. It was nice to have something that felt like a purpose again. The redhead looked over some flashlights in a display case, decided to pick up two of them before she left. With the guys in Englad footing the bill, she had access to everything she needed as far as equipment went.
She walked out of the store, squinting up at the bright blue sky. Not a cloud today, and it was cold. It had been over six months since she'd left the heat of Nevada behind, and she still hadn't gotten used to the climate change yet. Of course, it was February, which meant snow was coming soon. She should probably check out some of those down jacket's she'd seen inside.
Tuffy's head was protruding from the opening truck window when she exited the building, and the redhead approached the vehicle and offered him a jerky treat from a plastic bag she'd been carrying in her pocket. She'd gotten a second dog last month, a pitbull she'd named Garcia, and the other animal was snoring in the extended portion of the cab. They were going to need a bathroom break before she headed out again, it was going to be kind of a drive after this.
his was not a bad life she had, at least as far as it went. The work was interesting, and travelling to different places kept her occupied. She was...content.
Months were simply passages of time, they slipped day to day and turned them into weeks, Boden barely even noticed them anymore. He had in the beginning but not since he'd hit the ground running and gotten back into the swing of things. It was all about routine and the sooner you had it down the better off you were, the less likely you were to want things that you couldn't have.
He had been to countless countries and killed more monsters than his memory was able to keep track of. Boden had always been good at what he did, too good. He was a commodity, a valuable one, the hunter sent into places to do what most could not. It helped that he understood the methods and the mechanics of the beats that lurked in shadow, understood them to some degree and lacked most human empathy so he was able to do things no other person could or ever would.
He was in Canada this time, dressed for the occasion and well prepared for what was out there. Nobody really knew so he had brought an arsenal of weaponry, all supplied to him by the group itself. They'd dropped him several miles away from the nearest store, informing him to stock up on what he needed so he wouldn't need to break away from the mission at hand.
Boden had changed a lot since his time spent in Vegas, he had longer hair for one and many more scars, some of which were visible above the collar of his jacket. He took stock of the parking area and clocked almost all of the faces before he continued onto the store itself, turning his head at the sound of a dog barking.
A scar was lifted with an eyebrow as he felt a pull towards the woman feeding the dog, he couldn't see her face but there was something familiar about her. He couldn't quite place it. Boden turned away and continued into the store.
Mallory finished feeding the dog, wiped her hands off on her jeans. Slobbery mutt. She patted Tuffy's square head, and he retreated back through the window to lie down across the seat. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and ran her fingers through it. She'd let it grow out since taking the new job, past her shoulders, long enough that she had to tie it back to keep it out of her face when she was in the field. She should probably eat something before loading the freshly-bought supplies into the back of the truck.
Her new boots thumped on the wooden stairs as she climbed them back to the store's porch, and she put her hair up again after walking through the doors.
She spoke to the guy behind the counter for a few minutes, then checked out the jackets on display. Something comfortable and heavy, maybe a couple of blankets for the dogs.
"Excuse me," she said, raising her voice to attract the clerk's attention. "Do you carry fleece blankets? I've got a couple of dogs in the car who might need them. Where do you stock them?"
Boden was perusing the food aisle, there wasn't much choice for his specialised diet. He finally decided on a lot of water, the rest he could figure out as he went along. He'd always found a way to survive before and now would be no different.
He raked some of his hair back behind one of his now pierced ears and turned, heading in the direction of the counter. That woman was there again and her voice.... Boden's eyebrow twitched again and for a brief moment he was dragged back through time and he could almost picture a few rare moments of serenity.
"Quinn?" He said quietly, accented voice clear in the small surrounding area.
She hadn't been called that in so long that it snapped her attention away from the inspection of a plaid coat lining, and the redhead looked around to spot the source of the voice. Vaguely familiar, something gone but not forgotten. The sleeve she'd been holding slipped from her grasp when she saw a pair of blue eyes staring at her from behind a fringe of hair, and her stomach did a funny clenching thing as she alteed her posture to look at him more fully.
"Boden?"
He'd grown his hair out too, it was longer than she remembered. And he was sporting an earring. She bet Thomas loved that. The corners of her mouth tried to tremble into a smile.
"Boden."
Certain of it now, and why not? It had been a long time since she'd seen a familiar face. She wrote to Julie as often as she could, and kept in contact with Sonya, but she'd been too busy with the job for visiting. Mallory tried the smile again, felt it come more naturally. Gone, but not forgotten. Not by a long shot.
"Hi."
Boden offered a trace of a smile but it was really more of a smirk, too sharp in the corners to be a smile. "You're a long way from home," he observed. Her hair was longer and she seemed to carry a lot more on her shoulders. It had been a very long time since he'd last clasped eyes on Quinn, the only person he'd really spoken to during his time in Vegas.
"I've got this job thing," the redhead replied. Other than the slight changes to his appearance, Boden seemed the same. Unchanged and possibly unchangeable, like the ocean. She remembered what it felt like to have his hair wound around her fingers as she pulled it.
"You're a long way from England." She gestured with one hand, pointing at the world outside the store as if Great Britain was in spitting distance from where they were now. "I guess you're working too?"
"I was in Spain a couple days ago," Boden shared with a wry twitch of his lips. "And yeah, I'm working." The only time he hadn't been working was when he'd been with Quinn and those might have been rare and fleeting but they were memorable.
As weird as it was she still smelt as good as he remembered, heightened senses allowed Boden to pick up on a lot of things that most people missed. "Job thing?"
"Yeah its..."
Mallory cut herself off, uncertain if she was supposed to talk about it in here. Whatever the world at large knew at this point about the existence of the supernatural, she didn't think it was appropriate to blab about it in public. You never knew who might be lurking around, just waiting for the chance to get out the pitchforks and torches. ""Working for some other guys in England, actually. No one you know, I don't think."
She took a half-step towards him, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops. "I guess you heard about the whole....thing. The Washington stuff. Weird times to live through., huh?"
Boden inclined his head and then nodded it briefly. "News spreads fast through the grapevine. My group was quite concerned for a while." He placed a couple of the water bottles on the counter and waited for the guy behind it to ring them up to a total amount.
"Very weird times," he remarked with an agreeing motion. "Never thought I would live to see them."
"So how are you? Other than work?"
The question made her cringe a little, the stupid small talk qulaity of it, but you had to be specific with Boden or else he'd dodge your inquiry. She'd asked him once if he liked his life, and he'd said that sometimes he did. She wondered if he still liked it.
"Where are you headed?"
"As well as can be expected," Boden shared with a shrug of his shoulders. His ability for conversation had not improved and had in fact worsened over time given his isolation from people.
He handed over a note to pay for the water and proceeded to pack them away into his bag. "Me? I'm headed Northwest of here. There have been reports of..." He trailed off and eyed the man behind the counter. "Of unusual wildlife activity. I have to go and check it out."
"And you?" He asked, scarred fingers doing the various buckles of the bag up again. "I can't imagine you're out here on a vacation."
"No, I'm working too." Mallory plucked at Boden's sleeve, tugged lightly to draw him away from the counter. "Headed out to Yellowknife to check out the wildlife. There have been reports of bear attacks or something, the people I work for are looking into it."
She let go of his sleeve, folded her arms over her chest. It was like pulling teeth, but what else was new? A talker Boden was not. She was looking at the scars on his hands. He was a lot more beat up than he'd been before.
"You ready for the cold? The winters are supposed to be pretty bad out there."
"The less sun there is the better off I am," Boden reminded her with a small smirk. He'd always had a hard time in Las Vegas with all the sun. He had a ton of things in his pack and he'd come prepared for practically any situation.
He tipped his head to glance at her. "Looks like we're headed the same way." Boden headed towards the door, putting a little more distance between them and that counter and any ears that might be eavesdropping. "I'm going out there to kill whatever it is. You?"
Her stomach did the clenching thing again when he said they were going in the same direction, and she sidled out the door after him, stepping out onto the covered porch. There was a railing, and she leaned against it, indicating the truck where the dogs dozed.
"I'm usually just the scout," she said, keeping her voice low. "Check out what's going on, then contact the people who do the heavy lifting. If its a small enough matter, I can take care of it, but for bigger stuff, it needs more than one pair of hands."
She extracted the bag of jerky from her pocket again, ate a piece. She should probably have something more substantial before getting back behind the wheel, but the concept of food didn't seem very important right now. For him it was probably still raw meat and sushi.
"I was wondering if I'd ever see you again."
Boden paused for a moment, simply surveying his surroundings before he tipped his head, gaze running along Quinn's profile. Boden looked away after a moment, after he'd commited to memory the physical changes in her. He did much the same as her, slid his forearms across the railing and leaned against it, chilly breeze catching and unsettling a long strand of dark hair.
"Understandable," he agreed with a nod of his head. Boden was the only person sent in, he had no backup to speak of and was left to fend for himself, it had always been that way. He was more than capable of handling most any situation thrown his way so he actually preferred working alone.
Her next comment brought about a lift of that scarred eyebrow again. "You were?"
"Sometimes. Every now and then." Like it was nothing. "I like the earring. Its a good look for you."
Mallory stood in silence for a minute, watching the way the breeze ruffled Boden's hair. She had almost forgotten what conversation was like, with anyone, much less with someone who didn't really talk. The time alone had been good for her, though, given her the time she needed to reflect. The redhead looked at her truck again, ate another piece of jerky.
"Do you still like your life, Boden?"
Boden nodded his head, merely taking in what Quinn had to say without giving a response. Words were entirely overrated.
"It's a life," he shared, lifting his broad shoulders into an upward movement. "I'll live it until I die." That wasn't the answer she was looking for he was sure but it was the only one he wanted to give.
"And you? Do you like your life, Quinn?"
"Sometimes. Every now and then."
The road awaited, and she supposed she should get busy loading up the rest fo her supplies. Whatever was out there in the boonies, it wasn't going to wait around on her schedule. She pushed off from the railing, closed the distance between herself and Boden by two steps. Pushed the hair out of his face so she could see his eyes.
"Some things have changed, some things haven't. I guess our lives are different than other people's." The breeze wouldn't cooperate with her efforts to remove the obstruction, and a frown-line creased her brow in slight frustration. Because she liked to look at him, and his hair drove her crazy anyway.
"Do you still care?"
Boden inhaled the moment Quinn closed the distance and put her fingers in his hair, the same way she had all those months ago back in Las Vegas. She had never been scared by him and that had been a very rare thing.
"Do I still care?" He repeated, watching the way her brow creased in obvious frustration before he sourced where it was coming from and he lifted his fingers to slide all but a few hairs back and away from his eyes; they were still as intense as before.
The breeze was cold, chilly enough to leave a flush of red in both their cheeks and leave a lingering air of mist between the space that seperated them.
Emotions were hard things for Boden, he didn't trust them and didn't immerse himself in them as fully as everybody else. He supposed there was a fear of them, from being handed off as a child to being trained as a killer.
"I thought I didn't," he admitted. "But I know different now." He never answered questions as people expected, most people never bothered to read inbetween the lines.
Mallory wound a small fistful of dark strands around her fingers, gave them a tug. A slow nod, looking up into his face. Maye she had expected as much, maybe she hadn't. Neither of them had said very much out loud before. She pulled his hair harder.
"Good." She could see her own breath, a small puff of white in the space between them. "'Cause, you know, so do I."
Behind them, the screen door opened, then banged shut again as a heavyset man exited the store, and she released Boden's hair but ddn't step away. His earring glittered in the sun that peeked under the porch's covering, and she focused on that briefly.
"There's room in the truck," she said once they were alone again. "If you wanted a ride or something. Um..."
The redhead looked down at the hardwood slats of the porch, biting her bottom lip. There had been no one since Victoria, and truthfully it was because she hadn't wanted anyone. The time on the road had given her a chance to heal, but maybe it was time to risk it again. Because she cared. They cared.
Their lives were different from other people's. Why shouldn't this part be different too?
Boden hissed in a small breath as Quinn pulled on his hair before he merely allowed her to do it, a liberty not many people were given.
"Good," he returned in kind before Quinn's grip slipped and a man who shook the boards underneath their feet stepped out of the store. Boden's eyes followed him and his head tipped, ears hearing a struggling heartbeat. It wouldn't be long until a heart attack took a hold of him.
He slid his eyes back to Quinn and allowed a small smile to take a hold of his mouth. "I'd appreciate a lift."
She smiled back at him, just a little, just enough so he could see it, then tilted her head and the interior of the store. "I need to get the rest of my shopping done, but it shouldn't take long. You can meet the new dog before we get moving. It'll be nice to talk to somebody who might answer me for a change."
She gave his hair one final gentle tug, then brushed past him on the left. She thought about love, both old and new. If it was time for them to try again, it would become clear down the road. They lived in a new world now, and while things were different, they were also the same. Mallory looked over her shoulder at Boden, and her smile widened just one notch.
"Its good to see you again. Glad to have you along."
Boden turned his head to watch her before he pushed some of his hair back except for those strands that remained over his eyes, like always. "I can't promise to offer better conversation than the dog." His lips quirked in the corners and Boden turned away, taking the stairs until his booted feet crunched against snow.
It was cold, a lot colder than Nevada, but every place had been.
Intense blue eyes looked over his shoulder, watching Mallory as she disappeared into the store before they looked away and Boden focused himself.
Life was certainly going to be interesting with Boden along, that was for sure. Mallory watched him for a moment, noting the way his breath was visible on the slight breeze, then went back to dealing with the man behind the counter.