TWISTED ꜜ LOUIS PARTRIDGE

⟾ 20 | DO YOU MIND?

"Alright, Louis," she said, looking up, "are you ready?"

I squinted my eyes. "Maybe?"

She gave me a sympathetic smile, before starting to brush out my wound in an attempt to cleanse it. Any other cleaning solution for injuries would have been a much better option, but since we were using contraband from some random civilian's luggage, water had to do the trick.

And it hurt.

Like Hell.

"Breathe, Louis," Ash whispered, glancing up to look at me, "you'll be okay."

I winced, my head hitting the plane-wall behind me. "I am breathing."

"Good," she said, "I'm right here with you."

There was something strangely intimate about our situation, that made me feel slightly unnerved that I was letting her touch me. The last time we were this close, it didn't end well. But that was also when we hated each other. It was hard to determine what we were at this current moment.

I kept these thoughts in my mind, even as she moved on from cleaning the wound, to using the tweezers to extract the bullet, and then using the floss to stitch it back up. The healing process was more painful than actually getting shot.

I turned my head, trying to hide the tears forming in my eyes. "Ash?"

She stopped. "Yes, Louis?"

"Thank you."

She paused, needle between her teeth, and her hair falling messily beside her face as she looked at me. I could tell she thought of something unusual, because her nose scrunched slightly as ideas ran through her head. But then it faded, and she turned away.

"No problem," she said, "I need you alive, anyways."

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

BEING BACK IN LONDON FELT ILLEGAL.

Our plane had landed a few hours ago, and now we were fully back in the country. This was my home, but knowing that I was a wanted criminal ruined the experience for me. I kept a paranoid outlook on every person that crossed my path, and it didn't help that I was completely on my own.

Ash had gone to find us a place to stay (not a sandy bush, thankfully), and she tasked me with the job to find food for dinner. I chuckled at the memory of her reenacting possible situations—someone bumping into me on the pavement, someone trying to rob me—to make sure my wound didn't impact my self-defense.

But as I was striding down the shops on Oxford street, I noticed a tattoo parlor tucked in between a shoe store and a grocers.

And I had a very impulsive idea.

"Interesting design," the man at the front desk said when I showed him the fading sharpie marks on my arm, "never seen it before."

I shrugged. "It matches someone I know."

"Someone you know?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"They must be special to you, hm?"

"I guess."

"Ah, no room for modesty here, Lad," he chortled, "you're about to get this inked onto your skin permanently."

He had a point, and it only reinstated the fact that I was doing something that could prove to be a grave mistake. I only had one tattoo, and that was my (ex) Agent number on the nape of my neck. We were only ever allowed one. By doing this, I was casting aside any ties I had to my previous job.