The rain pelted down onto the pavement, the earlier sunshine forgotten as anxious feet scurried away to find cover. A rumble of thunder crackled through the air, making the scurries turn to sprints as the downpour thickened leaving the scent of fresh rain heavy within the air.
The storm splintered across the sky, the proud knights of the sky declaring their quarrel. Their conflict was loud, demanding the attention of most but Ana barely noticed the rain.
Her umbrella was forgotten at home, probably in a handbag stuffed in the bottom of her wardrobe, her coat barely surviving the thick curtain of rain but at that moment she didn't even consider her misfortune. The soles of her well-worn shoes splashed carelessly upon the pavement as she strode through the throngs of people. They parted ways for her, drifting aside as if they sensed not to stand in her way but there was one man that didn't move. He stood, still fifty metres or so away from Ana but he simply stood, staring at her as she approached.
A siren blared, passing through the traffic at the exact moment that Ana brushed past the man. It was smooth, the change of hands almost unnoticeable as the practiced movements were flawlessly executed. The deep gravelly voice spared her a swift 'grazie' before Ana moved past him and continued through the crowd.
Her heart pounded, her eyes smarted, her breath caught but she resisted turning around.
There was no going back now.
***
"Adam!" Ana all but screamed as she came out of the bathroom, now clutching the rather revealing towel much tighter towards her body. "What the hell!? That door was locked!"
"I am an international spy." Adam deadpanned as he stretched out on Ana's bed, flicking through one of the magazines that had been on Ana's bedside table as if he was completely unbothered by Ana's presence. The reality was rather different.
"That doesn't mean you can just break into my room, be a normal person for once and I don't know, knock maybe?!" He smiled at her lazily and Ana knew that she was fighting a pointless battle, now that he knew that it bothered her she would doubtlessly have many more unannounced visits from the Legend.
She exhaled, attempting to calm herself after the shock of seeing him in her room as she had come out of the shower. "What did you want?"
"Oh, it's nothing that can't wait. You get changed and then we can talk."
"Adam." She hissed, glaring at him accusingly.
"Yes?" He replied innocently, gazing up at her in a way that dared her to challenge him. He was trying to rile her up and unfortunately it was working.
Ana clenched her eyes shut, somewhat wishing that when she reopened them he would have mystically vanished. "Turn around." Regrettably, miracles rarely happened.
Adam obeyed her instruction at first, turning so that he faced the cream wall and listening as she rummaged through her clothes to pick out something to wear but he turned instinctually at her hiss of pain and was greeted by Ana in jeans and a bra.
"Adam!" She exclaimed once more but her shout fell on deaf ears as his eyes locked on her ribs. Pushing himself up from the bed he crossed the room in a few large strides before he gently ran his fingertips over the blossoming bruise that marked her skin. Its purple centre petered out of different shades of yellow like a galaxy of stars covering Ana's upper ribs.
"Was this from last night?" It had been a messy evening. Nothing had worked out as planned and Chambers had been none too happy about it. Adam had little doubt that the phone call he had received in the early hours of this morning was only the first in a very long line of them.
When they had arrived home an unusually quite Ana had disappeared to bed without speaking more than a handful of words to Adam. He had managed to pull her out of her daze long enough to get her out of the building but the moment that they had enter the quiet car for the drive home she had slipped back into its clutches.
"It doesn't matter. It's fine." Ana replied, trying to move herself out of Adam's grip but his hands held her firmly in place.
"You should have told me if you were hurt." He murmured, pressing lightly around the affected area to determine if there was a break.
"It's just a bruise. In our line of work it's hardly surprising." Ana responded, avoiding his gaze and attempting to subtly hide her back from his view but he was too perceptive to be drawn in by cheap distraction techniques.
Adam placed a hand on either of her hips, forcing her to turn around.
"Ana..."
"Let go." She demanded, pulling his limp fingers away from her skin easily, grabbing a top that had fallen to the floor and tugging it over her head.
"What happened?" Adam's voice held no whisper of its usual comical edge, his lazy smile replaced by wide eyes and a creased forehead as he attempted to understand the markings he had just seen.
"Nothing. Nothing at all." With those clipped words Ana escaped from the room, launching herself down the stairs and out of the front door before Adam had barely had the time to blink. It was only when he heard the engine of the car catch that he started moving.
"Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t." Adam muttered as he took the stairs three at a time, throwing the door open just in time to see the bumper of the car disappear out of the gates. "You are a bloody idiot." At that moment Adam wasn't sure whether he was talking to Ana or about himself, both were equally true.
Wasting three more minutes desperately trying to recall how to ride a motorbike Adam finally followed Ana out of the gate and found himself weaving in and out of London rush hour traffic up the river towards Westminster.
"If I get killed because of you Sparky, I can guarantee that I will come back and haunt you." Ignoring the melody of beeps that followed him along the badly paved road Adam activated the tracker on the car and set about following Ana.
Unfortunately for Adam, Ana wasn't all together stupid and knew that he would be following her. After about five minutes of negotiating some more than questionable routes and breaking too many laws to count Adam finally managed to catch up with the tracker, only to discover its crumpled remains in the middle of the street a faint red light flashing weakly.
"Think!" He hit his hand against his head hoping for a moment of inspiration as to where she would have run to but the only location that came to mind was a little too far from home.
Ana would stick fairly local, she wasn't spontaneous at heart, this had been a temporary blip brought on by emotions that she wasn't prepared to deal with. She would most likely stick to London so that left more than 60,000 streets for her to hide in.
Would she come home eventually? Almost definitely.
Could Adam afford to wait that long? Absolutely not.
She wouldn't have gone to somewhere too densely populated; Ana didn't like to be in crowds when she felt stressed. She would have gone somewhere with grass, somewhere close to nature. Battersea Park was probably the closest, just across the river but apart from the trees there was nothing to draw Ana there. She would go some that was significant to her; she would want to feel safe, around people that she knew. Or perhaps just one person that she had known.
Kicking the motorbike back into motion, Adam did a U-turn, speeding back through the streets towards Chelsea. The two red phone boxes standing guard over the black iron gates told him that he had reached his destination, the black Aston Martin parked illegally confirmed his suspicions.
Sure enough, after abandoning Tom's motorbike next to the car and winding his way through the twisting pavement he veered off to the left, spotting a crouched form beside an oak tree that was just beginning to wonder if spring would awaken its leaves soon.
There was a strange sense of beauty within this place. The flecks within the granite glistened as the leaves whispered the words of the wind. The old trees stood watch over the few people who roamed around in the early morning, each of them searching for something which could not be found. Whilst the beauty remained and the frost bitted leaves cracked beneath foot the sense of grief was tangible.
He said nothing as he approached her but he wasn't foolish enough to think that she didn't known he was there.
"How did you know?" Her voice was soft, no trace of tears as Ana rarely would show any emotion she hadn't permitted.
"It took me a minute or two." He studied the stone that she was hunched before, reading the engraved words just as she had done many times before. Once the immediate panic had loosened on his brain Adam had recalled the one place that Ana could always be found when a mission had gone wrong and here she was, just as he remembered, tracing those words carefully with her fingers.
Matthew Sparks
1959 – 2005
"Thank you for the wild goose chase as well. Much appreciated." He added, hoping to lighten the mood slightly but Ana still refused to turn to him, forcing him to stare at her back.
"Anytime."
He paused. "Ana..."
"Leave it Adam. I can't talk about it, not yet, not with you." He blinked, wondering what she meant but not pushing the matter as the wind descended upon them and Ana's form began to shiver lightly.
"Here." He took off his hoody, just as he had done on the night of the almost bomb and pulled it over her body, his hands hesitating for a moment as they held onto her arms before he released her and rose from the ground.
"We should go back, it isn't safe." Ana didn't fight the instruction, whether it was because of the cold or simply because she was tired of fighting him, Adam was thankful for the lack of resistance as they made their way back to the car. "Did anyone follow you here?" He wouldn't put Mario past having someone watching the house twenty four seven.
"No, I was careful."
"So careful that you left your gun in the car?" Adam asked as he opened the passenger door for her and spotted the weapon in plain sight on the seat. "It's a wonder that you aren't arrested more often than you are."
"It's called the miracle of good hair and a charming smile. You should try it some time. You're more than welcome to borrow my conditioner, oh wait, you already do." Ana teased half-heartedly as she pushed this morning to the back of her mind and forced herself into a good mood.
If she wallowed in the past she would never escape its clutches, she had to keep running forward. That way it couldn't catch her.
"Is that Tom's motorbike?" She questioned as Adam got into the driver's seat and stole the keys from her.
"Maybe."
"Won't he mind that it is now parked at a cemetery right below a signpost that says please don't park here?"
"Probably. Occupational hazard of being my friend I'm afraid." Adam reversed the expensive car out on to the road taking care not to scrape the paint on the gates.
The pair fell into silence as the quite purr of the car filled the space around them. Adam was consumed with questions, each one more demanding than the last all pressing to spill out of his lips should he attempt to utter another word.
What had happened to her?
Why did she run?
Why wouldn't she talk to him?
He knew Ana well though. He knew that if he were to push her now she would only pull herself further away.
After five minutes of arguing with his own mind he moved his hand from its position on the gear stick and intertwined his fingers with hers.
Words never worked well with Ana. She thought too much and was far too stubborn for her own good. However, actions were different. Adam didn't give her time to think, no time to second-guess herself, only time to feel his thumb reassuringly brushing over her knuckles.
"What did you need to talk to me about earlier?" Ana questioned after cautiously clearing her throat for fear that the words would get stuck.
"Perhaps now isn't..."
"I am a big girl Adam. Don't treat me like a child." People had spent most of their lives looking at her as if she were a child and yet Ana barely knew what the word meant. Her childhood had evaporated with the death of her father. It wouldn't be returning.
"Your mother called. She said that she is coming over to talk to you tomorrow. To discuss what has happened."
"With Mario?" Adam only nodded in confirmation to Ana's question, he knew that she wouldn't appreciate the answer.
"How many more times does she want me to say it? I am not going to talk about it!" Ana yanked her hand away from Adam, crossing her fisted fingers across her chest and digging her nails painfully into her palms to distract her from the memories.
She tried to focus on the sharp jabs of pain there as her long nails threatened to break her skin but her mind was more powerful than she had hoped and drew up the painful pictures of the past, parading them for her to cower before.
"You need to at some point." Adam couldn't help himself, he knew that it wasn't the right time but with Ana their rarely seemed to be one. "Maybe not with her but with someone."
"I can't." Her voice was small now, quiet as she became stuck between the past and the present.
"No Ana, you won't. There is a difference."
"Is there?" Her gaze turned to the window, a family catching her eye. The dad pushed a buggy with his youngest in whilst a little girl with corkscrew curls clutched onto her mother's fingers. They were smiling. Laughing even as the little girl skipped along the pavement, avoiding the cracks just as Ana had done with her dad when she was little. People walked around the family, many not noticing them, others looking with a soft smile lining their lips, an acknowledgement of the beautiful lives they were witnessing. "We all have to make decisions, whether they are wrong or right we still have to make them. Most of the time there is very little choice involved."
"That night, when I picked you up..." Adam inhaled deeply attempting to find the right words. "...the marks on your back..."
Ana's eyes clenched tightly shut her mind consumed with the memories of that night. The terror and the guilt. The blood that had stained her skin. She had ran, ran for further than she had thought possible. Ran until she had collapsed.
Adam had found her with her knees pulled tightly into her chest, rocking gently at the side of the road as if she were a child scared of a monster. It had taken him twenty minutes to get her into the car. He couldn't touch her even the briefest contact would make her panic. She was locked inside of the past with no way out.
Eventually he had managed to calm her slightly and move her to the car but he had seen those markings then. Only briefly and in the darkness of the night he couldn't be sure but now he was.
It was an intricate pattern. Unmistakeable.
Especially to those who knew what to look for.
An elaborate 'F' to represent the family name of Faloviano was shrouded by a mosaic of different pictures, each with a deeper meaning than the last. It was a symbol of membership. A tangible sign of loyalty. A mark forever etched into the skin.
But it came at a high price.
Induction into the Family was no easy thing. To gain the trust of criminals' sacrifices were inevitable. To truly be accepted as a member of the Family an innocent life had to be taken.
"I had no choice." Ana's voice was quiet, guilt-ridden and broken.
"What you do whilst undercover is for survival Ana. Nothing more and nothing less. It is to protect your life."
"That doesn't make it any less of a crime."
"Perhaps not but it makes it understandable."
"Some actions should never be understood." Her eyes were almost wild now, the pain of that time blatant on her face as it almost scared Adam.
This was the girl that he had seen cry over Marley and Me. This was the girl that would come in from training and eat a tomato sauce sandwich. This was the girl who still had to sleep with a light on. She wasn't made for the brutal world but had been forced into it. Too early, too soon, she had witnessed sights she should never have had to see.
"Was that what made you run from him?" Adam questioned, easing the car into fourth gear as the road opened up before them.
"He found my weakness and he exploited it. My loyalty to the Family was just another bullet in my chest." She couldn't look at him. She couldn't see the disappointment in his eyes.
"Ana," Adam glanced at her, taking his eyes off of the road for just a moment to glimpse the tormented expression upon her face. "It's not your fault. None of this is. You didn't ask for this."
"No, but I never said no." Ana whispered the guilt consuming her as she allowed it to absorb her mind for the first time since coming back.
She looked down at her hands, skin that had been covered in blood when Adam had arrived to save her. He hadn't questioned it. He hadn't questioned that she couldn't stand for him to even touch her. He had simply helped her to the car and driven her away from the nightmare. Or at least the physical nightmare, the mental reality remained with her, torturing her each night as she lay in the darkness.
Had she done the right thing?
There were so many lies. Too many. She had lost track.
She had wanted to keep Adam out of this. To protect him and yet she should have known that that would never be possible. He was an integral part of this now. The key to a machine that couldn't be stopped.
The machine was in motion.
There would be no going back now.
Adam took her hand once more. His eye focused back on the road as the streets became lined with cars once more.
"Don't worry, you never have to go back there."
If only that were true.