#ft. tera

Estella, the esteemed Mrs Michiligan, once ended up on the receiving end of a lawsuit. She’d scoffed at its’ ridiculousness and pawned it off on Neville , told him to get them out of it or at least barter them down, lest he lose his place as their family attorney, paid thousands to be on retainer at a moments’ notice, just in case Mr Adrian Michiligan found his shady business practices and family money somehow under scrutiny. “Tera was the only one around, and Nigella,” Estella had said, “deal with it, Mr Llamo.” And that was that. Estella Michiligan didn’t make time for manners when the recipient was being paid for their services anyway.

He’d dealt with it, of course, approached the daughter – then nine years old – of the couple directly. “Miss Tera,” he’d opened with, “do you know the neighbours dog?”

“The one that got what it deserved, or the less annoying one?” Tera had asked, and, okay, no. That was not an appropriate response, and Neville had frowned at her and the implications, and he did not want to know any details as to why she looked so smug, thanks ever so much.

That had been the start of it, years ago, the start of stress heaping up. Shady business practices were one thing, but the Michiligan name meant something in London’s high society, and Neville couldn’t have their name being dragged through the mud on his watch. He certainly couldn’t let it get out that the esteemed Adrian Michiligan, fourth of his name, had fathered a complete psychopath and left her to her own devices.

So Neville arranged for Nigella to be replaced with his own daughter, a twenty-something year old college student who needed all the money she could get, and who wouldn’t question the sanity of her charge in exchange for that money. Call Edith whatever you like, but the fact that she lacked scruples made her incredibly useful to him, at least in that respect. (Also, if anyone asked, he loved his daughter dearly, she was the apple of his eye, she reminded him of her mother who had abandoned the pair of them for a torrid affair with a tennis coach in a ridiculous cliche, and it didn’t bother him at all that her approach to babysitting involved lighting up a stream of cigarettes that burned a hacking cough into her lungs, et cetera.)

He’d had taken on the role of tutor and course designer, advising Tera’s parents away from boarding school where she would be left unchecked, not that he gave them that reason. One-on-one lessons multiple times a week, coaching the little brat on how emotions worked, on appropriate responses to certain stimuli. Training her to respond to things outwardly, instead of bottling things up (because it became clear, eventually, that she had emotions and liked to ignore them, discard them in pursuit of curiosity and rationality and experimenting in a way that made very little sense, considering her attitude towards science and discovery was typically quite dismissive). Coercing Adrian into registering Neville as one of Tera’s official guardians, so that he could sign her up for every possible activity: paintball, Scouts, gymnastics, swimming, a list of martial arts and hand-to-hand combat he couldn’t remember in hindsight. The aim was to offer her something interesting enough that she’d be distracted from her more sinister interests, exhaust her with activities so that she’d stop being outwardly malicious and lose the creepiness factor.

All of that, Neville lamented, and it was largely for nought. Edith had delivered Tera’s latest round of homework, as requested, or at least the notes the brat tended to scrawl alongside, and he’d found a list he didn’t much approve of.

Date someone from outside high society. Draw attention to a colleagues injury. Ask incessant questions about anything at all. Interrogate Neville about the legal system, until such point that he reports them. (This one was crossed out; likely because she knew he had the patience to endure endless questions. There were more, of course, and across the top of it all: ways to annoy parents into paying attention.)

“Tera,” he lamented aloud, and the girl herself invited herself into a seat. Fourteen and pretty and clearly starting to think about boys, he wouldn’t be fooled by her put-together look. She might be in a beige sweater and pristine cream skirt that fell past her knees, demurely crossed one knee over the other, but Neville knew her.  He knew the glint of intent in her eye, her mischief and her general everything. All the things that made Tera a prophetic name, because she was a constant nightmare for him to deal with, a constant terror. “You can’t do any of this,” Neville says at last, resting his hands on the desk.

It would be – ironic, in a way, or maybe satisfying, to seduce him. To get him to lower his guard, get him naked, get him arrogant, and stick a knife between his eyes. But. But.

The idea of his hands on her – it makes her shudder. Even from this distance, something like a kilometre away, far away to be nowhere near close enough to contaminate her. She’s killed murderers before, corrupt politicians and people who piss them off. It’s nothing on hits like this – on people who help people that victimise defenceless nobodies – hits that feel justified, for once. There are no leaps of logic here – she genuinely thinks this asshole defense attorney deserves to die. And she’s happy to do it, even.

Happier still that it’s from a distance. She likes kills like this, the way Giovanni specialises in. When people hire her, it’s often for honeypot betrayals: seduce, destroy, disappear. She doesn’t get to caress a rifle very often, to grasp it between her fingers, to feel smooth aluminium under her fingers. She does this rarely enough that she can pick up a new gun for each job; it is more practical than carting a specially designed weapon between jurisdictions, states, countries and continents, as she suspects Giovanni does.

She exhales slowly, tracking the target with the scope. Tera breathes slowly and evenly, alone before a window frame that holds no glass. There is nothing in her way, and she has been timing the lights. This idiot does not jaywalk; for all he is a terrible person, he does not commit small crimes like that. He will wait for the flickering person to appear and the countdown to start.

His steps shorten as he watches, and she hums softly. She breathes in, finger on the trigger. He’s on the phone; he is either talking to the vapid slut he calls a wife, who she does not expect to mourn extensively, or to a colleague, or to a prospective client. It’s his work phone, case gleaming sapphire blue in the sunlight. She exhales.

He stops moving.

She inhales once more, lines up the shot – allowing for the wind she can monitor from the sock across the road, limply twitching in an inconstant breeze. Her finger pinches as she squeezes the trigger. There is a pop, muffled by the silencing headphones she’s been wearing for the past ten minutes. Her ears will likely still ring after she removes them, and it will be some time before the sensation stops.

Still, she watches through the scope as the bullet hits the target. There is no grace to his death; the woman beside him – and she regrets, for a moment, the way his blood and brain matter spatters the covered stroller the woman pushes – does a double take before she starts screaming, covered in blood herself.

A kilometre away, Tera’s self-satisfied smile lingers even as she packs away her weapon. She will sell it to a pawn shop or a weapons dealer in the city, but only once it has cooled slightly. It will not be traced back to her, and the flight she will take to get away in the coming days.

AMSTERDAM, JANUARY

She looks out of place there, all pristine blonde hair and willowy limbs and supple, eye catching curves. In her gown and glittering jewellery, she’s the brightest thing in the place, and it’s not ideal, but she settles at the bar alongside the paper-white man with his glass of crimson wine regardless. It’s too feminine a drink for him, and while he’s shooting her a sceptical look - what woman comes to an actual gentlemen’s establishment, unless they’re a particularly ambitious prostitute - she smiles winningly and waves the bartender down.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” she says, and her voice is husky and enticing. The server delivers quicker than if one of the usual men had ordered, and she sips at the wine. “Fruity,” she notes aloud, refusing to make a face that matches her distaste. “Is this your usual?”

“I appreciate a variety of drinks,” he says defensively, and her lips curl into a smile. “Anything less would be boring.”

She takes at him, slowly lowers her glass. She pours temptation into her smirk, and leans in a little bit closer, the better to encourage his advances. “I’ve never been a fan of boring, myself,” she says.

He swallows.

DENMARK, NOW

She can see him swallow, and adjusts her grip on the sword. He does the same.

“You can’t leave me alone for five minutes, can you?”

She laughs, letting it ring out. It is lost in the clash of metal around them, but their little space - their circle - leaves it hanging. “You have taken me on quite the whirlwind tour, Syrus, but it needs to end. I have a job to do.”

“So do I.”

She gestures, hand sweeping out across the crowd. “Look around, my lord. Your army is going to lose to the lady knight and her lover and their army. The least I can do is make sure you don’t have to live with the failure.”

His shoulders tense, then hunch in. “You mean to kill me this time, then.”

She stops, doesn’t immediately answer. She pauses - she swallows.

PRAGUE, MARCH

She has a dagger strapped to her thigh when she joins him in his rooms. It is an alloy of iron and Byzantine and adamantium, sure to kill anyone and anything if she can deal a traditionally fatal blow. The heart is a classic, and it’s her intention here, a delicious kind of irony in it - stab the seduction victim in the heart, put an end to the romance here.

“Care for a drink?” He asks. His voice is deep and smooth, still the same, just as the last time they met. It sends a thrill of electric energy down her spine, knowing she will be one of the last people - the last person, even - to hear that voice.

“That depends. Is it going to be strong?”

“The strongest,” he says, and smiles at her like she’s supposed to be charmed.

But she’s met men with better qualities than him and survived their presence. She survives his that night, too, drinking with him, letting him drink another, more, most, until he drifts off on top of the covers. She leans over him like she’s tucking him in, and draws the knife. There is a soft Schlick as the metal scrapes against the sheath, and she raises it to strike - there is a spot between his ribs that she can get the blade through, and when she does, it will pierce his heart. He will die.

His hand catches her wrist before she can complete the act. A heavy silence hangs over them.

“A gift for me?” he whispers, shattering the quiet. “You shouldn’t have.”

She scoffs quietly. “With the price on your head, I absolutely should.”

“Then surely you should invite a little challenge,” he says, “make it a real worthwhile pursuit. Let me survive tonight, let me show you a good time. Let me convince you I deserve to live.”

“No one deserves to live,” she retorts. Her breath is warm against his skin.

“Let me be the first, then. If you aren’t convinced, you are free to chase me to your hearts content. It will be a game.”

She hesitates. “A game that ends in your death.”

He nods. “Or you failing at your job.”

She pauses. The idea is tempting - it is not often she is challenged, and for the price on his head, she expects more of a challenge. A cold pick up at a bar, a few months of courting, a night of revelry turned red with blood - it’s boring for her. She can not deny the temptation. She withdraws the blade, slips it back into its sheath.

His teeth are too white and his grin too wide, and beneath the thrill of a real challenge, she feels that she may have made a mistake.

DENMARK, NOW

“You don’t want to kill me,” Syrus says, voice filled with wonder and something that she takes to be amusement. Tera raises her sword defensively, and he shifts back, out of reach. “No, Tera - really. You don’t want to see me die. I’m observing, not telling: I would be dead by now if you did. You aren’t incompetent.”

She grits her teeth and rocks on her feet, shifting her stance. “Irrelevant,” she bites out; “my desires are irrelevant. The bounty can cover travel overseas. For multiple people.”

LONDON, BEFORE

Tera’s family lose their fortune and most of their dignity when her father is accused of committing a series of rapes and murders in the city. He gets off with no charge because of a technicality and a dubious connection with a judge, but it ends up not mattering.

The Michiligan ancestral home burns to the ground on a Saturday afternoon. Tera isn’t inside because she is spying on fencing lessons that the neighbours children are terrible at. She hears the scream of “fire!” when they are wrapping up, and would have ignored it if not for the smoke.

Her jaw drops and she watches as the building burns, disbelieving. She can hear screams from within, can see some servants scrambling to escape. A maid streams out the door with a cloak of flame clinging to her dress; she stops and drops and rolls until the fire starves. The smoke is heavy in the air above her home; she knows that it will have choked anyone upstairs to death.

Both of her parents would’ve been up there. Her father deserved it, but her mother doesn’t - didn’t. Tera has no doubt that that makes a difference; women burn as well as men, and she will be dead, too.

“Lady Tera!” calls a servant, clinging to a bundle in her arms.

Tera collects herself, drags her jaw shut with a click, and dashes away any potential tears. “Yes?”

“We - I couldn’t save your parents. However. I - Jeremy. Here.” She shifts her arms, and Tera pays attention to the bundle for the first time.

A slot covered arm flails and escapes the blanket, and Tera swoops in quickly. Her baby brother, not even four years old - he is alive. “Thank God,” she murmurs, and examines him with dedicated fervour. “They sought to burn father?”

The servant swallows and nods. “Everything is gone, ma’am. Not - we barely have our lives.”

London is a death sentence for their family, Tera knows this. She is nineteen and staring at her baby brother and his nanny, and she is going to have to get them out of this trap somehow. She is Lady Michiligan now - she is the one who carries her families legacy.

She is their greatest chance of surviving, and she will do anything to achieve this.

DENMARK, NOW

He stops moving, hand on his sword. For all the chasing, for the game he suggested - she’d never said why she had any interest in the income his death would provide her. “Travel,” he says, disbelieving. “I’m to die so you can travel.”

She lowers the sword with a huff. “Please - you’ve been running from your responsibilities since long before I met you.”

“I’m leading my parents soldiers to war,” he points out, disbelieving. Tera scoffs.

“You haven’t fooled me. What little lordling plays at warfare when he could be safe at home, unless they’re running from something?”

He stares at her - peers, really, searching as though she offers an answer he does not already have. “Are you talking about me?”

She sputters, and swings her sword upright again. “How dare you imply that I am as useless as a lord!”

“A lady, then,” he corrects himself, too dismissive for her liking. “A lady who sought to escape? Or - no, you were always eager for this, but not desperate. Not until now. You had a source of income before - previous murders? - but it is starting to run out. Or whatever you’re running from… tell me, Tera, what are you running from?”

She thinks of a small boy, nine years old and falling on the unnerving side of charming. People are uneasy around her family and always have been; but her family home has been in ashes for half a decade and the peasantry are often restless.

“My,” she starts, then halts, then takes a breath. Her sword point sinks into the ground and she slumps, tired of the weight and bored of pretending. “I have a baby brother, and the idiot peasants are weeks away from attacking what remains of my family. At most.” She lifts her gauntletted hands, tries to drag them through her hair and scowls when it hurts. “I can’t let him die, too. I refuse to let the peasantry win.”

Syrus is gaping at her like she’s just suggested something impossible. She’s unarmed and sets her hands on her hips, ready to get defensive. Before she does –

– the clash of metal against metal, and she’s dimly aware of a sudden ache in her shoulder. Syrus has grabbed her, tugged her against him, raised his blade to meet someone - something - else. There’s a singing crash, one, two three, and the other is disarmed. She can tell from the thud of metal on grass.

She twists out of Syrus’ arms and grabs her own sword again - the poorly balanced one that her aching arms are protesting - and eyes the man who attacked. He’s wearing the same armour as Syrus, gunmetal and blue, and he must have taken her for a threat and leapt to his lords defense. It’s admirable, but thanks to Syrus, he is disarmed and gaping, staring at them. “Why -?”

She doesn’t hesitate to pierce a gap between the plates of his armour. When faced with an unarmed nobody, she doesn’t think twice about killing him.

“He was unarmed,” Syrus protests immediately, and Tera scoffs.

“Anyone who aims for the back deserves to die,” she says, “and no, I don’t. You’re correct.”

It takes him a moment to catch on. “You don’t want to kill me?”

“I don’t want you dead,” she corrects. She does not address whether she would prefer to be the cause of his death – she still wants to be there for his last breath. She’s just less certain what that means.

He stares at her. She stares back, chewing on her lip.

“I want you to live,” she murmurs at last.

Syrus smiles.

(BETWEEN)

In April, they come to a rest in Paris. There, he chokes on a baguette while she looks on over lunch. It could be fatal. She saves him, though, drawing polite, surprised applause from the staff of the restaurant. She turns to harangue them in stilted French, proud and confident and haughty. They get a refund. Syrus lives.

In May, she catches up with him on the edge of Berlin. He’s speaking fluent German with a man in full armour; she looks on skeptically and, when they’re done, seduces the details of the conversation from someone she supposes is a knight. She catches him in the midst of them, ruining the ambush he has planned, and smirks as he threatens her with execution. Syrus lives.

In June, she finds him in a place full of snow despite the summer months. Someone misplaces her coat – she will not admit to losing it – and it is Syrus who keeps her warm, taking her to bed in front of a roaring fire, where they lose their clothes and any claim to virginity, if they hadn’t already. Syrus lives.

In July – well, you get the idea.

Syrus lives.

LONDON, LATER

“Is this truly everything you own?”

“No need to sound so skeptical,” Tera retorts hotly, a flush crawling up her neck beneath lead-lined makeup. Her dress is a soft shade of blue that doesn’t suit her personality at all, something Syrus has voiced multiple times since she purchased it.

(“That’s the point,” she had said last time, and laughed off his offer to fix it so it wouldn’t come up again.)

“It’s a long journey, is all. I wouldn’t want Jeremy to be bored without his toys.”

“Nancy has assured me that Jeremy’s toys are already in his cabin,” Tera says, setting down the last of her bags and rolling her shoulders. She is used to travelling; the heaviest thing she owns is her silver and red armour, and the sword Syrus bought her. It is iron, Byzantine and adamantium; it matches her dagger perfectly. She still isn’t convinced he didn’t steal the dagger to copy the design, but she cannot prove anything, and she was never aware of it being away from her side.

“And yours?”