Penny in the Well (Peregrine x Igraine)

[Peregrine]

Her voice pulled Ethan the rest of the way into reality, and he slowly lifted his head off of her arms, glancing around. He carefully undid the tight lace of his fingers, wincing slightly as the blood rushed back into the appendages. And then he set about extracting himself from Bree. He did it warily, carefully, almost as though he had woken up to find himself sleeping with a poisonous snake, and one wrong movement might cause it to strike. But nor was he inclined to stay still, to leave himself wrapped in her arms. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was weakness, but he was not going to stay there. She was touching him almost like a lover, something that Ethan had not experienced in a long time, and it was making him uncomfortable.

He pulled himself a few inches away from her, sitting up carefully and tucking his knees up to his chest. He wiped at his nose, smearing the trails of blood across his upper lip and over his hand. He glanced down, using this as an excuse to not meet her eyes, before shaking his head slightly.

"No," he agreed wearily, almost blankly. "No more running. There's no point in it anymore."

He was silent for a few moments, unwilling to continue. One of his hands had slipped off his knee and was trailing gently in the piles of pebbled that lay on top of the rock. He rolled one between his fingers, taking comfort in the sensation. And then, finally, he looked up at Bree.

She had taken her shirt off, and his eyes traced briefly over her scar. A small flicker of disappointment flashed through him at the mass of scar tissue. He would have hoped that his efforts had done a better job than that. Yet the fact that she was alive at all after a wound like that should have been more than reward enough. His eyes traced up the curve of her throat, and finally came to rest on her own eyes.

Still he was silent. She had finally asked the question that he knew had been burning inside her, perhaps for even longer than she had known. She wanted to know what he could do. And Ethan had promised to himself that he would explain. Yet he still sat there, silent, and his eyes unconsciously dropped away once more.

What was he? That was hardly a question he was going to be able to answer. As far as he was aware, he was human. His parents had been human, as far as he could tell, as they had never been able to find an answer to the strange things that seemed to follow their son. Yet perhaps he wasn't human, simply because no human should be able to do what he did.

"Are you going to arrest me now?" he asked, a touch of humor staining his bland tone. It was a diversion, and he knew that. Bree would probably know that as well, but it was also something that needed answering. Right now, if she said she was, perhaps he might even go quietly, despite his assertion on the top of that fifteen story building in Chicago. At least, he would be quiet for a little while, until he once more managed to convince himself that he had found the perfect way out, and he got another person killed. He had told Bree the truth. He was done running. There seemed to be no point in it anymore.

 

[Muirgen]

"Yeah sure, Ethan." Bree shook her head with exasperation, knowing full well he was deflecting, pushing her away - but she was just too tired, and far too relieved - strangely, inexplicably relieved - he was actually alive and coherent to give much of a damn.

The woman lay back, palms of her hands over her suddenly exhausted eyes. The stones of the riverbank dug into her bare back, but she was just far too tired to even squirm to a more comfortable position. "Just like... Cuff yourself or something with these nonexistent handcuffs I've got tucked away... Oh... Somewhere? Don't get any ideas there, we'll both regret it."

"Then you go do the right thing, turn yourself in. Like, the closest park ranger station, all right? I'm just going to lay here a little longer and soak up the fact that somehow, some way, I'm not dead. All because the person who's haunted my nightmares for the better part of a year did something... "

Bree barked a short, curt laugh, cut off quickly as she let her arms fall to her sides.

"Something impossible. That was impossible, Ethan. I should be dead. You should be dead. Hell, for a few moments there, I thought you were." Bree lifted up her head for a moment, eyeballed the green-eyed man for a moment and then letting her head fall black for again. Weakly, she tossed the wet remnants of her T-shirt toward him, the whole thing kind of splooshing in a soggy mass relatively close by.

"You're still bleeding, by the way," she said, the fingers of one hand waving toward him weakly. Bree hadn't missed the look of revulsion on his face when he looked up at her from her arms. Just one more contradiction in the mass of contradictions, improbabilities and impossibilities. He somehow had Victor killed; but he still cradled the FBI agent hunting him through some of the most deadly whitewaters in the nation. She disgusted him - yet he saved her life, wrapping his arms and hands around so tightly that even unconscious, he didn't let her go.

Bree didn't get it. But if he wasn't going to explain himself, she was in no condition to beat it out of him. 'Beat it out of him? Really?' The very thought made her grin, as if she'd ever done such a thing in her life, but the wistful little smile still felt good.

"So are you going to answer my question," she asked, face skyward where she lay catching her breath, "Or are you still calculating the odds of me ever figuring out what the hell just happened on my own? I can tell you the chance of that right off - they're practically nil."

 

[Peregrine]

Ethan did not wish to begrudge Bree her sarcasm, but he did anyways. Consciously he understood that it was her way of coping with the fact that everything she believed, everything she had been taught about the world since birth, was being shattered. He understood that. At the same time he resented it. He resented the obligation that she represented, and he resented her for putting this burden on him.

After all, physically, Ethan had been alone since he had left his parents at age eighteen. But, emotionally, the child Ethan had been abandoned before the age of ten. Now, for the first time in a very long time, he was expected to confide in another human. He was expected to be accommodating, and truthful. And he didn't want to. He didn't know how.

So he chose to linger in silence, waiting for something to arise and save him. He didn't even realize that he was still scanning the numbers, was looking for something that could get him away, until he saw the chance to run. He took in a small breath, startled, before sighing. Was that really what he wanted to do? Did he really want to go back to running, with no goal in mind, glancing over his shoulder constantly, waiting for the world to fling him back towards Bree?

If it meant that he wouldn't have to tell her anything, maybe. He let out a small snort of laughter, before picking up the shirt she flung at him and wringing it out. The watered down blood dripped onto the rock in a small torrent, and he stared at it blankly. He stuck the shirt back under his nose, wiping away the blood that had pooled in the corners of his eyes and in his ears with the hem.

For a moment there was silence, and he tried to relax. He tried to prepare himself so as to be able to answer her questions. But when she finally spoke again, he broke.

"What," he said, voice dripping with pained sarcasm. "You want to know what I am?" He let out a harsh bark of a laugh, before tossing her shirt back at her. "Do you want me to say I'm a monster? That I sold my soul to the devil?" He was silent for just a moment, turning his eyes back to the water.

"Well, I didn't," he finally managed to spit out. "And I'm not. I'm a man. Just..." he choked slightly, gagging over the lump that had formed in the back of his throat. He swallowed hard, biting the inside of his lip, before choking out his final words. "Just a man who wants to live his life."

 

[Muirgen]

Bree winced as he spoke, shaking her head as she sat up painfully. She heard the hitch in his voice, the unexpected defensiveness she couldn't possibly have known her words would elicit, but she had no words for it, no defense.

"Well don't we all?" she said, as much statement as a question. Bree was confused by his reaction, his words, utterly at a loss for words for some seconds as she watched him. Obviously something in her own speech had hit... A nerve? A wide open raw nerve but for the life of her, she couldn't begin to guess what it was. Sell his soul to the devil? Really!? What in all the world would possibly make him think she'd been insinuating any such thing?

Had someone accused him of that before? Seriously? What in the hell had he done, could he do, that would lead anyone to think... Bree rubbed at her sore eyes with her fingertips, as if she could somehow wrest an answer to this painfully strange enigma from her aching eyelids.

"What I wanted to know Ethan, is what the hell you did to make this happen," she said finally, hands falling from her face, wrapping easily about her knees as she brought them to her chest. "It's not... normal. Not maybe one in a billion - hell, maybe not even one other person on the planet - could have done what you just did."

"I'm not your therapist, and I'm not going to rehash your childhood injuries or your adult traumas, and what 'life choices' brought you here to this riverbank today. I've also got zero interest in burning you at the stake either, for whatever the hell that might be worth. I left my pitchfork and torch in my other change of shorts. Sorry."

Bree shrugged, and then she tried a smile. It was a confused smile, an exhausted smile and, quite likely, a relatively battered smile, but it was still there, and still genuine nonetheless. " Please Ethan. You're here. I'm here. You just saved me from the proverbial watery grave, and I'm not out to poke fingers into whatever tender parts you have. I'm tired. I'm confused. I think I swallowed half the damn river and, I'm pretty sure, you swallowed the other half."

"I'm also a genuinely sarcastic bitch, and it's both a gift and a magnificent defense mechanism. I want to know what just happened, and how you did it - and honestly that is all."

 

[Peregrine]

He had to tell her something. The numbers told him that much. That fact calmed the twisting in his stomach and dissolved the lump in the back of his throat. He had something that he needed to do, and it calmed him down. All he had to do was focus on this one, last task.

If he didn't say anything now he could make her go away. Eventually she would just get up and leave. But it was impossible that she would leave him forever. The hunt would not be over until she found an answer that would satisfy her. And that was what he needed to find. An answer that would satisfy her. She was done with this hunt; as done with it at this moment as she could ever be. But if he left her with nothing that fire would kindle within her again, and they would be right back to where they had begun.

He had saved her life. She knew it, and he knew it. That act had changed something between them. If he could just find the right words now he could end this. The numbers answered his subconscious plea, and he longed to close his eyes, to devote his complete attention to them. He had to find a solution, one that could get him out of this situation for good. That was all that concerned him.

"It..." he began, stumbling over the words. How could he say something? But his mind latched on to something she had said, only moments ago, something that he had dismissed without even recognizing it. "You said it yourself. Probability. It was probability." That wasn't enough. It wouldn't be enough to satisfy her. But this was where he had to be careful. He had to pay the strictest attention to what he said, and what implications were, or, more importantly, were not, in his words.

"I've always been good at making predictions about the world. Looking at something, and... quantifying what is going to happen. Water is a very predictable substance. It doesn't do things randomly. It is always affected by gravity and is always influenced by the path and the landscape surrounding it. I just made sure we were in the correct spots at the correct time."

Not once in his short speech did he imply that he could actually alter the probability of something happening. That was far too dangerous. Things happen all the time, and if there was something odd or exceptional, well, that was life. And that was ok. Other people were ok with that. It was ok for him to win thousands of dollars at a casino, because sometimes people just got lucky. So long as he lost more than he ultimately took away, he was safe. If he just happened to walk out of a police station, so be it. But as soon as he implied that he was responsible for it, then things always got out of hand. It was alright if the exceptional happened around him. It was not if he made the exceptional happen through the power of his own will.

 

[Muirgen]

Bree did her level best to understand, to try to wrap her head around what it was that Ethan was saying. Her instincts told her he was telling her the truth - but only just so much. There were whole layers of truth he was keeping beneath the surface. It seemed to Bree that he was showing her an iceberg from the prow of a ship, and trying to convince her it was floating like an ice cube in a cold drink, and not concealing a mountain of treacherous ice beneath the frigid waters.

But at the very least, there was some truth there. It was a start. Bree could work with that.

"All right," Bree said, pulling her knees to her chest, wincing in pain though she rested her chin atop her kneecaps. She let out a slow, ragged breath before taking yet another, to speak once more. "So... You can see the... Probabilities? Though in water it is... Somehow easier for you. Because water is predictable?"

It was really more of a statement than a question, and Bree chewed her lip thoughtfully, knowing she was missing something vital here, something crucial. But her body ached, her head ached - hell, she would have sworn even her brain ached. All the impossible things she had ever seen him do ran through her thoughts like a stream she was helpless to dam. Water. Probabilities...

The leaf.

The leaf she had watched him play with just before he went over the edge, dancing on nothing at all but Ethan's will. There was so much Bree had seen him do, so much that should not have been - but the leaf. He had made a leaf float. She had seen it with her own eyes, and she wasn't insane, or concussed or delirious or hallucinating.

"But how did you make that leaf float, before you went over the railing back there? What does probability have to do with that, Ethan?"

 

[Peregrine]

The leaf?

For a moment he had been so close, so close he had honestly allowed himself to believe he was free. He had relaxed, watched her slowly process the information that he had given her, watched as the numbers reassured him that this was it. She might not have truly believed he was telling her everything, but she was willing to let it go. Or so he had believed.

The human brain was a fickle thing. It made connections that even the numbers couldn't predict. It made sudden connections, and whole paradigms could shift. And so it was with Bree at that moment. She found something to keep her looking.

The leaf.

It took Ethan a moment to even remember about what she was speaking. The little games he played with the world around him were so second nature by now that he didn't even notice them. It was like a comedian telling a joke in his head and laughing out loud, or a musician who tapped out the keys to a song of which they were particularly fond on a solid surface. It was an unconscious gesture, his way of interacting with the world. Finally he was able to pick out the memory, a memory that he would never have remembered after all of the excitement if she hadn't pointed it out to him.

He had grabbed the leaf because the water had been so easy, madly spitting all over the place, every which way. The same water that had allowed him to jump into it, had carried him all the way through the rapids without ever bashing his prone form against the rock.

She was staring at him, and the longer he hesitated the less she was going to believe the next partial truth he would feed her.

He shook his head side to side, a motion somewhere between complete denial and a desperate attempt to placate her. "The leaf wasn't floating. The water spat it out, and I grabbed it. It is easy to do when you can predict where it is going." That wasn't enough. She didn't trust his words. Why would she? Well, perhaps she would trust her eyes. "Here. Look."

With one hand, Ethan picked up a pebble, with the other, he held out his hand, palm up, mutely asking for Bree's own hand. As soon as he had it, he looked around, tossing the pebble lightly up and down, up and down. He studied the numbers, doing exactly that which he was pretending was all he could do. Read the numbers, observe and predict, but not alter. As soon as he found the perfect moment, he threw the pebble wildly up into the air at an angle that made it seem impossible it could ever come back. The pebble quickly disappeared from sight, but, up higher, a small gust of wind grabbed the light rock, sending it skidding back in Ethan's direction.

His eyes never breaking contact with the pebble, Ethan negotiated Bree's hand with deft movements. The pebble bounced off the rock, and landed lightly in Bree's palm. It rolled slightly, but stayed balanced in the center of her palm.

"Gravity works the way gravity works. Nothing can change that. But gravity and wind, they always do the same thing. Just like water. That makes them easy to predict."

Now he had her convinced. He had to have her convinced. This was getting far too close to the truth for comfort.

 

[Muirgen]

Bree stared for a moment, mystified, at the pebble sitting so impossibly in the center of her palm again. It was the same pebble, she was sure. Of course it was. She had watched Ethan toss it away, and then it had simply... Come back. Ethan seemed to be saying he could somehow predict these... Probabilities? And she'd certainly gotten the proof, such as it was, in the palm of her hand.

She honestly could not believe she was willing to consider this possibility, that the man before her was somehow... Superhuman? Like a superhero from the comics, able to somehow see the probabilities of this world and use them to move through the world so easily.

She poked at the pebble for a moment with the fingertip of her hand, the pebble that had somehow or other found it's way back to her, however unlikely. And Bree was quiet for several long moments, letting the thoughts run through her head as they would. Yes, she could see now, attribute all the insanely improbable and impossible things she had seen him do with her own eyes. How Ethan could walk off a 15-story rooftop, and somehow glide all the way down to the ground; how he could make that impossible leap to the ferry, leaving her stunned at the dock. It might even make sense, how he could walk out of a jail, and then a police station - impossible probabilities.

Still, there were some questions that simply could not be explained away so easily, so pat as this seeming bit of magic Ethan had devised.

Her gaze turned up from the pebble in her palm to the man before her. Yes, there were still a couple vital questions left, answers she could not sleep again without hearing from the only man in the world who could provide them.

"Gravity works as it does, and wind as well. Water yes - apparently water is easy. Isn't that what you said?" Bree chewed the inside of her lip thoughtfully, trying to ignore the strange, phantom ache in her chest, over the scar that had actually stopped causing her the least trouble some months ago.

"What about bullets, Ethan? Do they work the same way?" She leaned forward just a little, hand closing into a loose fist over that pebble, something of a sudden, strange talisman to her now. "Why did you kill Victor? What had he ever done to you, that you would? I knew him, for some time. To the best of my knowledge Ethan, you weren't so much as an acquaintance of his. Not even his gardener or his manicurist or his pool boy. Nada."

"So why? How?" Bree stopped chewing the inside of her lip, letting out a long breath of air she didn't even know she'd held inside. "And did you mean to nearly kill me too, Ethan? I've chased you all over this country, East coast to West, just to know these things."

"I can barely sleep, Ethan. Not since that day," Bree admitted, helpless to stop the words once they had begun. "I close my eyes, and I see Victor's head explode, and then I'm falling. Just falling, until I hit the ground and wake up screaming, piss off my neighbors, scare the hell out of my cat. But even worse are the nights he talks to me, Victor does. A dead guy with half a gory head, asking me why I didn't keep him safe like I said I would, so much for witness protection and all that B.S... "

Her voice finally trailed off as she closed her eyes, wrapping her arms almost protectively around her knees, covering her belly, her vulnerable chest and her long scar, until she could finally meet Ethan's gaze once more.

 

[Peregrine]

He let her talk. Ethan didn't interrupt her flow of words, the words that had been building inside of her since they met four months ago on that fateful raid. That one desperate question that had haunted the both of them was finally out in the air, and there was no avoiding it.

He had known what he was going to tell her for a long time now. The answer had been building inside his subconscious since she had shouted that question to him for the first time, just over three months ago as he glided away on the ferry bound to Seattle. For a moment he tried to find a way around them, around the dishonesty that burned within them. Technically his words would be the truth, but they would be skirting so far around his desperate desire to avoid the truth of his ability that they might as well be an outright lie. Why did he care about lying to her? Where in this absurd game of cat and mouse had she become more than the hunter, and he more than the prey?

"The mob was already there, Bree," he told her gently, softly. Would she break? Would the answer to her question take away the few supports that kept her upright? "That is why I was wearing the uniform. I was there to make money. Knowing what cards you are going to get is the ultimate gambling technique. I didn't need the money.

"When I noticed the raid coming I tried to leave. The last thing I wanted to be was caught by the police. But when I tried to leave I noticed the presence of the mob. If I'd actually walked out of the building I would have been shot. So I decided to take advantage of the raid.

"You weren't supposed to notice me. I was supposed to be one of the many workers taken away. I'd answer the questions, and no one would look twice at me. But then you gave me a personal escort, and I had to find another way to get away.

"The mob had left one hitman. Just in case the off chance of a shot presented itself. There was a clean line between him and Victor. The only thing blocking his sight was... me. And I just... stepped aside. It was one little move, and it seemed so easy. Everything is easy in your head. Reality is a lot harsher. It didn't feel like murder when it was just an idea.

"I didn't do anything to the bullet. It took its course. All I did was step aside."

And it was true. He was the only thing blocking the hitman's line of sight, and he did simply step to the side. But he didn't tell Bree that he had set things up. He didn't tell her that the only reason the mob had left a hitman in the first place was because he fixed the numbers. That the only reason that there was a clear line of sight was because he had made sure that it would be there.

But he hadn't lied about the numbers. It hadn't felt like murder. It wasn't as though he had pulled the trigger. But Ethan had accepted that darkness on that very same ferry ride. He had accepted the pride within him that let him believe he had the right to manipulate the course of events. That he had the right to change things however he wanted to promote his own desires.

Somewhere in that raging waterfall a stroke of relief had found him. His crime wasn't any less, but there was atonement waiting for him. It didn't make what he had done any better, but it still freed him.

He had saved her life twice. But she had saved him, too. She had saved him, and she had shown him himself. Perhaps they were even.

 

[Muirgen]

'As simple as that?'

No, Bree wasn't been broken. She had not melted into tears nor slipped into gibbering madness. She was simply... Listening. Absorbing Ethan's every last word, letting the soothing tenor of his voice run over her far gentler than the river that had nearly drowned them.

Her knees were still pulled up to her chest, almost protectively. Her fingers cradled her head, rubbing slowly against her scalp, eyes staring sightlessly at the ground and the tops of her bare feet. These were the words she had waited to hear, for so long. So why did it all still feel... Incomplete? As if she were finally putting the very last pieces of a puzzle together, the picture meant to be forming before her very eyes - and yet pieces, vital pieces were still missing that stole away understanding, that marred the whole picture. But Bree didn't even know where to look for the missing pieces, nor even what questions to ask that might lead her to them. She couldn't escape the surreal feel of this entire conversation, despite all she had seen, experienced for herself - however impossible these things might be in the world she had known not even an hour ago.

Bree reeled, but she was not broken.

"So you stepped aside, and Victor took a bullet to the head and... I suppose you got away." There was no question in her voice, only a statement.

"It all sounds... Simple enough. Well, after accepting the possibility - reality, sorry. The reality that someone can actually do the things you can do in your head, with numbers. If you walked out of that casino, you'd have been dead. So... Victor or you. I can... I can understand that. Almost. You didn't know him." Bree blinked, slowly raising her gaze from her feet to the green-eyed man sitting across from her.

"You said I wasn't supposed to notice you. But I did. Do you know why, Ethan? Why I noticed you?" Bree waited several long, thoughtful moments before she continued.

"I noticed you Ethan because of all the people there in that casino - the wait staff, the bouncers, the dealers, the clients? You alone were like the eye of a storm. Calm, collected - not at all anxious, nervous, crying or shaking like a little girl." Bree laughed mirthlessly at the memory, her brow furrowing in concentration as she followed a far darker thought raised its ugly, serpentine head.

"All these things you see, or know or... Or calculate. Did you try to kill me then, Ethan?" As if they had a mind of their own, Bree's fingertips found the thick pink rope of scar on her chest, peeking over her bathing suit nearly to her throat.

"You saved my life today - I know that. But did you see or... Or calculate your numbers, or... Or think through all the chances, all the probabilities, the possibilities. Did you want me dead too, right next to Victor?"

 

[Peregrine]

It might have almost been funny, if the whole situation hadn't been so lacking in any humor. Him, try to kill her? No. That was the last thing he had done. It hadn't even been a possibility, that little shard of a bullet that would enter into her body. It had been such a small number that he had dismissed it, for it had felt like the same chance as him waking up tomorrow to realize he had gone blind. Now he knew that something about Bree made the numbers different. It was like there was a little warp around her, and it made the impossible happen. Surely there was no one else in the world who could be sitting with him, right here, right now.

"No," he said. "I did not want you dead. I did not even know you would be hit." And that was all he could say. It was all he could offer, and it was probably the most honest thing he had said for as long as they had been talking.

And I saved your life. He added silently, a trace of bitterness in his mental voice. You don't know it, but you were supposed to die then. And I didn't let it happen. This whole chase, the whole distortion of his life, in the end it was all his fault. His actions, and Bree, who was somehow able to find him over and over, stand right next to him in the one city in America where he just happened to be, one day before he was planning on leaving.

"My turn for a question," he finally said. "Why didn't you let me go? Why did you even start chasing me in the first place? How did you keep finding me?"

It was, in a way, only one question. The first one was the obvious one, but the last one was the one to which he really wanted to know the answer. They were directly connected to each other in Ethan's mind, and the last could not have been asked without the first.

But, underneath it all, there was a touch of relief. She had accepted his explanation about what he could do. He wouldn't need to make up more excuses, more lies. Maybe, at the end of this all, they would be able to separate, and never see each other again.

 

[Muirgen]

Bree buried the laughter - slightly hysterical, utterly inappropriate - that tried to well up when Ethan railed off a string of questions. For a guy who could 'see' numbers, he sure did have a strange idea about the definition of "one." She'd asked her questions though and, at the very last answer, she truly believed the green-eyed man. Yes, he may have stepped aside, let Victor eat that bullet - but he didn't want her dead. No, she couldn't escape the impression there were certain vital pieces she was still missing, still didn't even know how to ask about - but Ethan hadn't tried to kill her.

That, at least, was no small thing.

"I started 'chasing' you, because that is what I do. I'm an FBI agent - Victor was my source. My informant, right up to the second that half his head was vaporized. For all I knew Ethan, you were a mobster, complicit in some way I had yet to figure with Victor's murder. Hell, I even wondered if you might be a hit man yourself."

"I couldn't just 'let you go.' That's also what I do. 'Letting you go' was never an option, not so long as I could somehow, some way, follow that trail of crumbs that always seemed to lead me to you... " Bree's voice trailed off, her brow furrowing in thought as she chewed her lip.

No, that wasn't entirely true. Yes, investigative work led her to him the first time. In Chicago, it had been a tip from that dirt bag "night manager." True, both encounters had their own surreal endings as Ethan traipsed out of the Seattle PD jail, or stepped off the roof of a 15-story building; but at least she could point to a reason, a clue, a piece of information - however flimsy or unlikely - that had sent her in one direction or another.

She hadn't been searching for Ethan today. As a matter of fact, it would be fair to say coming to Bend with Jarod had been the 'Hail Mary' of all ways to run as far from Ethan as she possibly could, in every conceivable way. The weight of all the impossibilities had been crushing her confidence beneath boulders of doubt, sapping her faith in her very sanity.

She hadn't been searching for Ethan today at all and yet, here he was. Here she was.

Bree suddenly realized, she hadn't the least idea how she managed to keep finding him. Not really. Those crumbs that led to him had always been miniscule at best, not fit to feed a sparrow.

"But... I honestly don't know how we keep coming together. Not really. I wasn't looking for you today - far, far from it. Maybe we're just... Damn, I don't know. Lucky?" Bree almost snorted the laughter out her nose, shaking her head. "Unlucky?"

Over her dead body was Bree going to voice the other option that came to mind, one that made about as much sense as nebulous, fickle luck; or a man who could somehow 'see' numbers and possibilities and chance.

That perhaps the two of them were, somehow, meant to come together, again and again and again.

 

[Peregrine]

"I don't do unlucky," Ethan replied, a touch of humorous snark entering his tone. It was enough to finally get him to smile, an honest and somewhat surprised expression. The flow of blood finally seemed to have come to a halt, and he wiped is face one more time, looking down at her bloodstained shirt. No, Ethan didn't do unlucky. Maybe, when it came to Bree, there was no such thing as lucky or unlucky. It just... was.

"We seem to have come full circle," Ethan said a moment later. "What now, Bree?" They had gotten a brief chance to talk on the roof of that building in Chicago, but that could hardly be called a real conversation. But now they had spoken enough to get the most important questions in their relationship out of the way, and the buzz that had been keeping Ethan awake and functioning was starting to fade. More than anything, he wanted to return to his hotel room, change into a dry pair of clothes, and sleep until his pounding headache went away.

He couldn't tell, though, whether or not he wanted to get away from Bree. This was the second time she had pushed him to use his abilities in a way he had never used them before. Probability was the bounds of what was possible. Luck was pushing the impossible into the realm of probability. Both of the times he had saved her life, he had been forced to step over that edge. It frightened him, but it also intrigued him. The dark lure of power. Perhaps the best way to stay away from that darkness was just to get as far away from Bree as possible.

"If you try and arrest me, I will run again. I'm not going to jail. I'm not going to go sit in an interrogation room in some FBI compound. And, as you have already told me, you will be obliged to chase me. We will be starting our little game of cat and mouse all over again, and next time it may not end until one of us is dead."

 

[Muirgen]

When Ethan finally laughed, a genuine laugh not tinged with bitterness or barely repressed anger, Bree finally felt something inside simply... Let go. He wasn't a monster. He wasn't the murderer or the mobster or the criminally-connected villain of her nightmares. He was just... A guy. A guy who could do some extraordinary things, but just a guy nonetheless. And Bree laughed too, even shaking her head incredulously at Ethan's dire predictions of doom and despair and death.

"Well damn, I bet you're a ton of fun at parties, aren't you?" she said with a chuckle, stretching her arms overhead until she felt the satisfying pop of her spine, unfolding her cramped legs until she could feel the muscles loosen and lighten.

"I already told you Ethan, I'm not going to arrest you. Did you miss the part where I'm not concealing a gun or cuffs?" she quipped as she pulled her legs up beneath her, almost springing to her feet as she looked down at him. The smile never wavered. "I'm tired of chasing you Ethan. I'm done. I was wrong. I never in a million years could have guessed just how wrong, but I was. Victor wasn't my friend, he was my source - but he wasn't a bad guy either. He screwed up - a lot - and he didn't deserve to get shot. But there isn't a jury in the world that would convict you for taking a step."

Bree stood to her feet, the water shoes on her feet already dry. She looked to the blood-stained shirt Ethan used to stanch the bleeding, and decided to write it off with a small shrug of her shoulders. "I won't either. Still... " The corners of her lips made a mischievous little twist, an impish light in her grey eyes just beginning to shine, suggesting just a hint of the woman who had been, before the day she met a green-eyed man.

"Come with me if you want to live," she growled as she held her hand out to Ethan where he sat, her voice deep and low in the absolutely worst imitation of Arnold Schwarzenneger's accent of, quite literally, all time. Bree chuckled warmly, wagging her fingers to him again.

"No really, come with me. Seriously, if you'd like to have your life back. I'm not arresting you, and I'm not going to hunt you down if you turn and disappear this very instant. But right now you are a wanted man in Washington state - hell, nationwide really. I can't just walk into my boss' office and offer up a mea culpa or two, say I had a 'come to Jesus' moment and realized I was wrong, and could you please call off the dogs we set on Ethan? Christ, they already think I'm going batshit crazy anyway - no need to add fuel to that bonfire."

"But if you want law enforcement across the United States to stop looking at you funny everywhere you go - hell, if you'd just like to go into a Dunkin' Donuts again without wondering if the patrolman at the counter with a dozen sprinkled and glazed is looking at you funny? I'm going to need you with me, Ethan. I'm not asking you to tell my higher ups what you've told me, about the... The numbers. The probabilities you see. But they'll need to see you, to hear you with your own words, your own reasons. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the only one I have to offer to get you your freedom back, so you can stop looking over your shoulder everywhere you go. When we're done, then you can turn, go, disappear - whatever you like."

Her hand was still outstretched, her fingers beckoning Ethan one last time. "What do you say?"

 

[Peregrine]

For a moment Ethan remained sitting on the ground, staring blankly at her hand. Thoughts and numbers whirled in his head, competing for attention. And, as he always did whenever the situation got even remotely tricky, Ethan turned to the numbers to better understand what course of action he should take. They were the only thing in his life on which he could rely with complete certainty. Even his own mind had betrayed him before this point.

The one thing for certainty he knew was that he wanted his life to go back to normal. Ethan knew how to crave excitement, but there was a whole realm of difference between excitement and fear. And running from the FBI would only ever lead to more fear, paranoia that around every corner he turned he would find another battle with the police. Now that Bree was no longer going to be on his trail it was entirely possible that the numbers would be enough to keep him from ever running into someone who was looking for him, but that would still keep him constantly on the move, constantly on guard. He could say with certainty that was not what he wanted.

He barely even reacted to her humorous attempt at imitation, barely even flicked his eyes as she continued to speak to him, explaining what his options were. He didn't need her explanations. The numbers told him everything he needed to know. Not that he wanted her to know that.

There was no doubt that the best way for him to return to his former life was for him to accept Bree's offer, to let her escort him to the FBI, and answer their questions willingly. He had run the last time because he knew that they would be looking close. They would try and dig up everything about him, and would find the many secrets that Ethan had scattered around the country. At that time they would almost certainly have found the multiple identities he possessed, and the millions of dollars that were scattered in various banks across the country. And every time they tried to get one layer closer to the truth they would find more and more reasons to hold him, to keep looking deeper. He would have come out looking like the worst kind of criminal.

Now... now it was far more likely to be a wrap up. Bree would vouch for him, and there would be far fewer reasons for them to try and find out about him. It would be far less effort for them to just accept whatever information he gave them, and let him go. It would be one more case closed, and any people who had been put on his case could be withdrawn, and put to better uses than chasing him across the country. He would pick one of his most innocuous identities, and just keep his eye on the numbers. He would act carefully, do his best to appear perfectly honest, and keep things going in the direction that would get him out of questioning the fastest.

His hand reached out blindly, and closed over Bree's fingers. Now he finally looked at her, and even though his eyes were distant, he really was looking at her. "Fine," he agreed, pulling himself up onto wobbling legs with her helping hand. "But we will need to make a stop in Denver on the way to Virginia. I need to pick up some identification."