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[indent][color=silver]The neon sign outside Ma Kelly’s Greasy Spoon buzzed with all the enthusiasm of a dying insect.

At half past two in the morning, the diner sat wedged between a shuttered laundromat and a pawn shop in the heart of beautiful, gothic Wicklow, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that most sane people were asleep. Rain streaked down the windows in uneven rivers, smearing the city lights into blurs of red and gold across the glass.

Bret looked like he’d been dragged through most of those streets personally.

His suit jacket had long since disappeared from his shoulders after the chaos at the casino, having offered it to his late night companion. The collar of his shirt was slightly torn, dried blood stained one sleeve, and every muscle in his body seemed determined to remind him of decisions made over the previous six hours. Cressida was going to kill him. A deep bruise was already darkening along his jaw where Miss Sauvage had introduced him to a superpowered right fist.

He sat heavily in a booth near the back of the diner, cradling one last pint between battered hands. The waitress hadn’t even asked what he wanted. She’d simply seen his face, sighed heavily, and disappeared into the kitchen muttering something about “that poor bloody church boy again.”

Bret wasn’t entirely sure whether he should find that comforting or concerning.

Across the table sat one of the few people in Calder City who currently knew exactly how strange his evening had actually been: Sienna Mercer. The casino fight had answered several questions neither of them had asked aloud. Unfortunately, it had also created a dozen new ones.

Bret took a careful sip of his beer and immediately regretted it as pain flared through his split lip.

[color=#C8E39A]“They do great burgers here.”[/color]

The waitress had looked at Sienna the way people did when she turned up somewhere unexpected - a quick, involuntary assessment, the kind that clocked the dress and the jewellery and the jacket that was clearly not hers and arrived at a conclusion that was probably half right. Sienna had smiled at her with the particular warmth she kept for people she wanted to like her immediately, and ordered a beer without consulting the menu, and that had apparently been sufficient.

She sat now with both hands around the bottle - no glass, she hadn't asked for one - Bret's jacket over her shoulders, the fabric smelling like his cologne, which she was finding harder to object to than was strictly convenient. Her hair was now up, thrown haphazardly off her shoulders somewhere between the casino and here, and yet somehow still looking like it meant to be that way. Wicklow at this time of the night had its own particular atmosphere, and Ma Kelly's seemed to suit it perfectly.

She took a slow sip of her beer and looked across the table at Bret - at his torn collar, the dried blood caked on his arm, the bruise darkening along his jaw that would look considerably worse by morning - and then looked back at her beer.

[color=#B77B89]"I'll take your word for it. You look like you've earned the opinion."[/color] She turned the bottle slowly in her hands. [color=#B77B89]"How often does your evening end like this?"[/color]

[color=#C8E39A]“Realistically?”[/color] 

He pondered the question as it bounced around his tired brain for a few seconds. This was not so he could come up with a suitable lie but actually because he realised he didn’t know the answer; and there was an answer. It had become all too common for him to venture out into the night, get the shit kicked out of them and then go and do it again the next evening. There were too many people in Wicklow who needed help, too many that needed hope. It was a place that had more often than not been let down by the system that was meant to protect it, and its people. Bret couldn’t sit idle and let it continue, so he helped where he could and it usually ended with him in this exact position.

[color=#C8E39A]“At least four nights a week.”[/color]

His mind drifted back to the night's events. From meeting So-Mi and finding out about Tae and tracking Tae to the warehouse where he vanished into thin air. Which nicely led to Bret promptly being accosted by generic henchmen numbers forty five and forty six. Those two idiots leading him to the Velvet Room and meeting Sienna before winding up at the casino and avoiding the deadly loogie of Miss Sauvage. If he was gainfully employed, tonight would be the night to ask for a raise.

[color=#C8E39A]“I imagine you have questions. By all means, you can ask me anything.”[/color] He reached for his beer and pressed the cold glass against his burning shoulder. [color=#C8E39A]“Oh fuck that’s nice.”[/color]

Sienna took a slow sip of her beer and let the invitation sit for a moment, turning the bottle in her hands the way she had been doing since they sat down. He was expecting Directorate Nine. Or the drive. Or what she had seen him do before Sauvage moved, the way he had known before any of it happened. She could see it in the particular quality of his stillness - the bracing, the readiness for the obvious question.
She looked at him across the table.

[color=#B77B89]“Is it worth it?”[/color]  she asked quietly. [color=#B77B89]“Four nights a week.”[/color]

[color=#C8E39A]“Every second.”[/color]

Bret did not hesitate when he responded. It was almost urgent. He had asked himself the same thing many times and every time he did, he always ended up at the same place. He had never done this for thanks or for any kind of applause. That's what the men in spandex tights were for. Bret did this because it was the right thing to do. He did this because he was raised to believe in the brotherhood of man, to believe in the goodness that one put out in the world, that said goodness would spread and would guide people to something bigger than themselves.

[color=#C8E39A]“I may not be from here but that doesn’t mean I have the right to look the other way when people are in trouble.”[/color] Bret moved the bottle away from his shoulder and decided to take a swig from it. Having been pressed to his skin, it had turned slightly warm. He hated warm beer. [color=#C8E39A]“Can I grab two more?”[/color] He called to the waitress who didn’t bat an eyelid. She simply did as she was asked because she had seen this scene way too many times already.

His eyes moved back towards Sienna. [color=#C8E39A]“It may not be for everyone but it works for me.”[/color]

She listened to all of it without interrupting. The waitress reappeared with two fresh bottles, set them down without ceremony and disappeared again with the particular efficiency of someone who had stopped being curious about the conversations in her booths a long time ago. 

Sienna had met a lot of people across her bar. Politicians who talked about the public good and meant their approval ratings. Philanthropists who gave generously and loudly and kept careful track of who was watching. People who did the right thing when it cost them nothing and called it virtue. Bret Lowther was getting the shit kicked out of him four nights a week and had answered her question like it was the simplest thing in the world.

She found that she didn't have an immediate response to that, which was unusual enough to be worth noting.

The brunette took another sip of her beer before reaching into her bag unprompted, setting the paperwork - neat despite everything - and the pen drive on the table between them. She smoothed the edge of the papers once with the flat of her hand, an automatic gesture, and then sat back.

[color=#B77B89]"The names of every Directorate Nine agent active in the United States,"[/color] she stated, her voice low and even. She looked up at him. [color=#B77B89]"Is that actually what's on it?"[/color]

[color=#C8E39A]“Yep.”[/color] 

He answered plainly, having another mouthful of his drink. 

D9, Bret’s former employers. A clandestine section of British intelligence, tasked with monitoring, containing and investigating anomalous phenomena like the Grey situation in Calder City. To release the names of any operative, let alone ones hidden and embedded in US society, would be absolutely catastrophic on all fronts, it would be a security risk unheard of since those misogynistic spy movies of the 1970’s.

He reached over and took a hold of the drive, placing it into the pocket of his pants. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sienna, in fact he likely trusted her more than she should given that they had only met several hours before. It was more of a case that Bret knew just how valuable that information was and even when he put it at risk, it was always going to find its way back to where it belonged. And that wasn’t the Pilgrim talking, that was him.

[color=#C8E39A]“I needed a way to buy in. Had to be something no one could turn down.”[/color] Bret wiped a strand of loose hair from his forehead, sweeping it back into his, admittedly, slightly too long shaggy mane. [color=#C8E39A]“Do you know any dickhead worth his salt, would turn down an entire list of spies? I don’t think so.”[/color]

Sienna studied him for a long moment across the table, propping her head up on one closed hand and drumming her manicured fingers of the other on the table. 

[color=#B77B89]“Yes, but how did you even [i]get[/i] that list of spies, Bret?”[/color] She dared ask, watching his expression intently for any inkling of an answer. When the set of his jaw and his steeled gaze didn’t immediately reveal anything, she leaned back into the booth, crossed her arms over her chest and sighed.

[color=#B77B89]"That's not something someone just accidentally acquires."[/color] Her eyes flicked briefly toward the pocket where he'd stashed the drive, and then back upwards. [color=#B77B89]"So from where I'm sitting, there are only two explanations."[/color]

She held up one finger.

[color=#B77B89]"Either Directorate Nine is staffed entirely by idiots, which I find hard to believe."[/color] A second finger joined the first. [color=#B77B89]"Or you used to be close enough to them that getting your hands on something like that was possible."[/color]

[color=#B77B89]"So which is it?"[/color]

Bret smiled. She was very cute when she was playing detective. Well, she was very cute the entire time but he had to digress. [color=#C8E39A]“I used to work for them.”[/color] He answered casually, like he wasn’t saying he used to work for one of the most selective and secretive spy organisations in the world. Instead, answering as if he had once worked for Ben and Jerry’s. Which he obviously couldn’t, being lactose intolerant.

[color=#C8E39A]“I was recruited out of the Royal Marines. They liked what I could do. Worked with them for a few years and then left on good terms.”[/color] There wasn’t an ounce of chicanery or false charm in any of Bret’s words. He spoke honestly and truthful, yet it was damn near dangerous how nonchalant he was throwing this around. [color=#C8E39A]“Still got friends there, they help me out occasionally. Usually four nights a week.”[/color]

His grin faded a touch, as he moved away from her eyes and looked through the rain streaked windows of Ma Kelly’s. There was a certain dark beauty to behold on the other side of that window pane. It had suckered him in when he first arrived and had continued to do so ever since. He returned his attention to her, back to her eyes. [color=#C8E39A]“One of said friends, begrudgingly, gave me the list.”[/color]

She looked at him for a long moment.

Royal Marines. She turned it over quietly, the way she had been turning things over all evening, and felt something slot into place with the particular satisfaction of a theory that had been close but not quite right, correcting itself. The way he had moved in the casino - the chair, the tackle, the economy of it - she had originally clocked it as something extraordinary, something possibly Grey. She had been wrong. Or at least, not entirely right.

Just a man who had been very well trained to do very dangerous things and had apparently decided that wasn't quite enough to keep him busy. Her eyes moved briefly to his jaw, the sleeve, the shoulder he had been pressing the bottle against all evening, and then back to his. 

[color=#B77B89]“That’s a generous friend you’ve got. Awfully trusting too.”[/color] She picked up her bottle and took a slow sip, setting it back down with quiet precision.

[color=#B77B89]"So the Marines, Directorate Nine,"[/color] she repeated quietly. [color=#B77B89]"And you left all of that to do this."[/color] Her eyes stayed on his. [color=#B77B89]"On your own."[/color] A pause, shorter than the ones before it. 

[color=#B77B89]"Well, to end up in a diner at half past two with a woman you met four hours ago."[/color]

[color=#C8E39A]“There’s worse places to end up.”[/color] 

Bret’s mouth curled into the same, tooth, sweet, slightly goofy smile that he had given her when they first met at The Velvet Room. As good as he was at predicting where things were going, he had very little idea what was going to happen next. There were way too many variables in play. Tae was still in the wind. El Jefe was still a ghost and King’s Blood was still on the street and likely to expand beyond Wicklow. 

Then there was Sienna.

She may rightly be the biggest variable of the entire equation. A Grey, that much he was sure of at this point. And she was the owner of a place that was notorious in all Burroughs of Calder City. Notorious for being the kind of locale that didn’t care what kind of business one was in. Neutrality was its own kind of moral compromise and it seemed that for the most part, Sienna had chosen it. She had shown as much when he first asked her about the King’s Blood yet, she still agreed to help him. To follow a stranger into the night and face the unknown. If she was morally grey, then it was on the lighter shade.

[color=#C8E39A]“And technically, I didn’t leave to do this. I left to volunteer at a church.”[/color] He chuckled a little bit, the first sign of laughter from him all night. It soon dropped back into his usual steadiness, the quiet calm that seemed to be his default setting. [color=#C8E39A]“With those routes…”[/color] he motioned to the papers she had laid down. [color=#C8E39A]“I’ll be able to track the King’s Blood distribution network and find Tae.”[/color]

Sienna looked at the papers for a moment, then back at Bret with the expression of someone doing quiet arithmetic.

[color=#B77B89]“I suppose that’s my cue,”[/color] she announced, with the tone of someone who had already decided it wasn’t.

She reached for her beer instead.

Bret followed her lead and reached for his own beers. Bringing the bottle to his lips, only pausing for a moment. The Pilgrim remained silent. No warning. No path opening before him. No escape route revealing itself. Whatever was about to unfold, Bret was on his own and for some reason, talking with Sienna felt more dangerous than a foxhole in some foreign country with heavy artillery flying overhead.

[color=#C8E39A]“I suppose at this point, I’m probably meant to ask you questions too.”[/color] He placed the bottle down and leaned further back in his booth seat, draping his arms across the back of it. [color=#C8E39A]“So I guess I’ll only ask the one that I think matters the most.”[/color] There were several that floated between his mind and his lips. Some even almost made it into his throat. But even with all of the thoughts he was processing, only one question, just one, made sense in that very moment.

[color=#C8E39A]“What do you want for breakfast?”[/color]

The brunette looked at him for a long moment across the table - at his muscular arms draped across the back of the booth, the easy steadiness of him, the question hanging in the air between them like it was the most natural thing in the world to ask after everything that had just happened.

The smile she gave him in return settled into something warmer than usual.

[color=#B77B89]"Pancakes, obviously,"[/color] she replied. [color=#B77B89]"And coffee."[/color] A beat. [color=#B77B89]"Black."[/color]

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By the time the pair had finished their beers, it was half past three.

As they departed the diner, it became evident that Wicklow had slipped into the late-night hush where the streetlights seemed dimmer and everything was softer at the edges. Sienna had intended to head home to her loft and pop by the Velvet Room to see how Marcus fared closing the bar for the night, though every step reminded her exactly how long she had been on her feet. Her heels - tolerable at first - had long since turned on her, and she shifted her weight carefully as she went, trying to not make it obvious.

Unsurprisingly, Bret had noticed anyway.

By the time they reached his building, it no longer felt like a decision so much as an inevitability. He had insisted it was too late for her to venture back to the Lantern District, and Sienna was beginning to run on empty in a way neither of them needed to argue with - the adrenaline from the casino long gone and replaced by exhaustion. A pause became agreement without either of them needing to say much at all.

Inside, his apartment was quiet in that lived-in, late-night way, with the faint hum of the city pressing in through the windows. Bret offered her the bed without a second thought- a proper gentleman - and Sienna hesitated only briefly before accepting, too tired to insist on anything else. He took the couch. There was no awkwardness in it, only practicality and the unspoken understanding that the night didn’t need to become anything more, well, [i]complicated[/i]. Sienna disappeared into the bedroom, and for the first time in hours, she allowed herself to sink into stillness.

Sleep came easier than expected, but morning did not arrive gently. The gravity of the situation followed immediately after she opened her eyes.

She shouldn’t have been there. 

Sienna pushed herself upright, suddenly far more awake than she wanted to be. The previous evening had felt harmless enough while it was happening - a few drinks, helping Bret find clues she wasn't entirely sure she should have been helping him collect. But distance had a way of restoring perspective, and perspective quickly reminded her that this was indeed a risk.

He was following the trail of King’s Blood and she operated a bar that sat directly in the path of the people he was looking for. The Velvet Room had become neutral ground not by choice, but by nature and she knew enough to understand that neutrality only worked when it actually looked neutral. The longer she lingered, the harder that became to explain - to others and perhaps to herself. 

Her decision had been made before she even left the bedroom. By the time she slipped quietly into the living space, she knew what she had to do. 

Bret was still asleep on the couch, the apartment quiet around him, and for a brief moment as she watched his chest rise and fall, she considered leaving a note, offering some explanation. Instead, she headed for the door.

The lock clicked softly behind her.

Bret stirred at the sound of the door closing but didn’t open his eyes. He knew that sound all too well. Not the sound of the door but of someone choosing to walk a path that diverged from his own. As he lay there silently, he felt no judgement, no sadness for what could have been. Instead, he simply smiled, looking back fondly on the night he had shared with a beautiful stranger.

He couldn’t blame her and he wouldn’t either. Sienna worked in a world that he had no right being in. Bret, for all his sins, refused to operate in an area where moral bankruptcy was the norm. He couldn’t do that again. He was certain, without a shadow of a doubt, the Lord had put him on this planet to help people. That the All Mighty had gifted him The Pilgrim to help people. Sienna, well she had her own reason for doing what she was doing and, at least for the moment, their paths were to diverge. Yet roads were funny things and sometimes they came back together.

When he finally decided to awaken properly, Bret opened his eyes and began sitting up slowly from the couch. Though the speed was not really much of a choice as everything from his nose to his toes ached as if he had been hit by a speeding truck. He swung his legs off the couch and made his way to the window. Grey clouds hung above, another fine day in Calder City. He looked down at the fruitbowl. 

No note. No number. Well, it was a shame but that’s just a curve on the road. Still, he owed her pancakes. He wouldn’t forget that.

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Elsewhere in Calder City, the cameras zoomed in on Sienna’s face as she left the apartment and began to cross the street.

The figure remained cross legged on their seat, seemingly had been all evening. The room, which was cramped and small beyond the many screens pinned to the wall, smelled of stale coffee and microwave pizza. Their eyes widened, staring at the beautiful face seen from different angles on every screen. 

[color=white]“A new player.”[/color][/color][/indent]
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[color=silver]Collaboration with [@BrutalBx][/color][/sup][/center]