#roguelock

  For a month, she only knows him through the thick, heavy lenses of her binoculars, his voice fuzzy as it comes through her earpiece. She’s bugged his office and his apartment to get a better read on his routine, taped tiny microphones to the underside of end tables, buried them in potted plants, nestled them discreetly into innocuous light fixtures--  it only takes her a few days to memorize the cadence of his speech patterns, the texture of his voice when it’s tired. She could pick out his mumbled whispers in a crowded room if she had to (it’s as close as she ever gets to anyone these days, but it’s nice to have something else to focus on, something to fill the silence of her own life).

It’s not the most exciting job she’s ever taken. In fact, there’s little about it that stands out at all-- Dr. Flynn leads a horribly mundane life, spending most of his time working long shifts at a local hospital. Those rare nights he spends at home, he spends alone with a book or a movie and a box of takeout. No family. No wife. Only a handful of friends to speak of (she knows, because she’s tapped his phone. He chats with a British woman named Venice once a week for about forty minutes, half of which she spends despairing over his pitiful lack of love life and the other half scolding him for his poor eating habits). It makes for boring surveillance, but at least the hit should be easy enough without anyone accidentally getting in the way. The less collateral damage, the better.

Her client’s instructions were clear and simple: cross off the doctor in charge of treating the teenaged daughter of some high profile CEO. Rogue doesn’t ask why. She doesn’t need to know.

However, the longer she tracks him, the more surprised she is by the knowledge that anyone would have it out for him. He’s quiet and unassuming and totally harmless, the kind of guy who probably gets his birthday forgotten by his coworkers but doesn’t bother kicking up a fuss about it-- definitely not the kind of man she was used to settling her crosshairs over.

It’s enough to perk her curiosity, and the closer she pays attention the more he surprises her. Once he “misplaced” some paperwork that allowed an uninsured cancer patient two rounds of free chemo. He cried when he lost a nine-year-old car accident victim after a two day struggle in the ICU. He gave up his entire lunch break in order to teach the CEO’s teenaged daughter how to play Euchre with the orderlies (the girl had stared up at the handsome doctor with wide, adoring eyes, clearly nursing a crush the size of Texas, and Rogue felt an unbidden smile tug at the corners of her mouth as she adjusted the focus on her binoculars).

It doesn’t take her long to realize that Peter’s lack of a personal life is self-imposed for a different reason than simple neglect or disinterest-- he spends so much time at the hospital because he’ll cover shifts for just about anyone who asks, stepping in to help the attending whose kid is sick with the flu, the young resident who was scheduled to work on their first wedding anniversary, the exhausted physician who simply needed a mental health day. He works long enough hours that Rogue’s eyes are starting to feel permanently strained from staring at the hacked hospital security feeds, but he never seems to expect anything more than a ‘thank you’ in return. It’s hard to believe he’s even real, let alone on someone else’s hit list.

He’s a good man, by far the best she’s ever come across in her run-down life, and maybe if she were anyone else, she’d consider walking away. However, she isn’t naive enough to lose sight of what her purpose is with Peter Flynn. Discovering that he is a decent person changes nothing-- a job’s a job, and a good man can take a bullet just as easily as a cruel one.  

Still. It’s a shame. A man like that doesn’t deserve such a violent end.

She takes an extra week to learn his habits, to make absolutely sure there’d be no complications before she finished things. Her client had been adamant that Dr. Flynn’s death needed to be swift and unremarkable but notable enough to send a message. Rogue waffles back and forth on the idea of strangling him and passing it off as a suicide (easily botched but less likely to make the papers) and simply shooting him in his sleep (messy, but much less subtle). The way the client had talked up the job, she can’t help but wonder if there’s more to the good doctor than meets the eye, if there was something she’s missing in her scrutiny of the situation.

That extra week would prove to be her undoing. The down time makes her itchy. She’s being overly cautious. It’s not her style.  

In an effort to settle her suspicions and get some of her confidence back, she starts following him on foot. She keeps a safe distance, of course, but she’s close enough that she can hear his voice when he laughs-- it’s sends a strange, intimate thrill down her spine to hear it clear and close without the muffle of her earpiece. She follows him to the grocery store, stands behind him at the bank, spends five minutes listening to some god awful troubadour singing Johnny Cash songs in Central Park while Peter fishes in his pockets for some spare change to throw in the man’s guitar case.

It makes the days pass by much faster. She finds herself liking the blue of his eyes now that she can see them without the heavy lenses of her binoculars between them.

She knows she’s playing a dangerous game, edging on the kind of recklessness that has buried a thousand other professionals before her. She could have killed him ten times over by now, at least. Max would be so disappointed if she could see her protege now, breaking every rule they’d made for themselves just because some bleeding-heart doctor was proving to be a tougher mark than she’d bargained for. But it’s hard to stop now that she’s started, hard to think about all the ways this could go wrong when she’s so comfortable being his shadow.

Her worst mistake happens the day before she plans on killing him.

He stops for coffee on his way into the hospital (she knows he prefers a Starbucks americano to the Folgers instant crap they keep stocked in the hospital). She follows him instinctively, mourning the five dollars she’ll be forced to spend on something sugary and undrinkable in order to keep up her cover. However, she’s completely unprepared to come face to face with him when he stops to hold the door for her.

He’s looking right at her for the first time, those lovely blue eyes meeting hers with a gentle expectancy that has her heart stuttering to a halt in her chest, and oh this was a bad idea.

“Um,” Peter says after a long moment, and Rogue realizes abruptly that she’s just standing there, staring back at him like an idiot rather than accepting his chivalry. “After you?”

He’s using that wry, quiet tone she’s heard a thousand times before, picked up in a dozen tiny microphones scattered throughout his work and home. The sound is so familiar she’s afraid to think about what it will feel like to never hear it again, after she silences him for good.  

“Thanks,” she mutters hastily, disguising her southern accent as best she can with something flat and vaguely Bostonian. She doesn’t make eye contact as she passes, ducking inside and focusing all of her attention on the menu over the counter, pretending as if she’s already forgotten him.

But the damage is done. That moment changes everything.

She let him notice her.

She can feel his eyes on her as he waits behind her in line, knows instinctively that they’re trailing after her as she leaves with her coffee, going in the opposite direction of the hospital and parking herself at a bus stop two blocks away to put some distance between them. He was watching her with a different kind of scrutiny than she’s given him, something curious and innocent and a little dreamy and it kicks like a recoil in her chest.

In a small, shameful moment of weakness, she sips her overpriced coffee and allows herself to wonder what it would have been like if she didn’t have him in her crosshairs-- would she have smiled at him instead? Maybe flirted with him while they waited for the baristas to call their names? Would he have gathered up his courage to ask her for her number, or would that have been that, just a brief, insignificant moment of two ships passing harmlessly in the night?

It doesn’t really matter in the end. After five minutes a city bus screeches to a halt in front of her, and Rogue declines to step on. She has a job to do, after all, and she quietly prays that the sinking feeling in her stomach will be cured once Peter Flynn is no longer a presence in her life.

Of course, that’s when things go completely tits up.

She breaks into his apartment that night, gun and silencer holstered to her hip. It’s a heavier weight than she’d expected, and she fights for focus as she moves through his space (every few steps she has to remind herself that this is a job, that she is a professional, this is a job and it doesn’t matter how good it felt to have his eyes on her for once, she’s determined to finish this).

The apartment is dark and quiet but she navigates the hallways with ease, each room stamped into her memory from when she’d bugged the place nearly a month prior. She tries to listen for his breathing-- she knows he’s home. She heard him wash up for bed. Chances are he’s fast asleep and this will all be over with one quick, painless shot.

However, before she makes it down the hall to his bedroom, she hears the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked behind her, and it takes all of her training not to flinch at the sound.

“Don’t move.” Peter’s voice is firm but she can hear the slight rattle of the gun in his shaking hands. Those hands were trained to help people, to fix broken bones and ruptured organs, to be steady under insurmountable pressure, but they’re trembling now.  

Rogue freezes obediently, raising her hands cautiously out to the side to show that she’s unarmed. Her gun is still holstered to her side, but she doesn’t trust her quick-draw to be fast enough to beat an itchy trigger finger. At this range, he isn’t likely to miss.

After a tense breath, she starts to turn in an attempt to face him, but Peter cuts her off.

“I said don’t move!” he snaps before adding, almost a little apologetically, “Please, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Rogue could laugh at the irony, but she holds her ground and does as she’s told. Given her precarious circumstances, she probably shouldn’t be as proud of him as she is, but in spite of herself she's impressed that he’s one of the few determined to go down swinging. She hadn’t expected that, and goddamn if it doesn’t endear him to her all the more.

Dr. Flynn doesn't quite reciprocate her charitable feelings, and she can hear his cautious steps as he moves closer, trying to edge around her. The barrel of the gun brushes lightly between her shoulder blades, gentle as a caress.

“I know what you’re here to do, but the girl’s dead,” Peter tells her flatly, his voice gone tight and desperate. “Isn’t that enough?”

Immediately, she wonders who did it. It was possible that Max had sent one of her other freelancers without letting Rogue in the loop. Or maybe the client got sick of waiting and decided to get his hands dirty after all. Either way, Peter’s more aware of the situation than she’d given him credit for, clearly.

He manages to get in front of her, holding the gun in a white knuckle grip and leveling the barrel at her heart (he’s a doctor, he knows all the most vulnerable places to aim for even if she’s not sure he has it in him to pull the trigger). His eyes go wide with recognition when he gets a good look at her face, and Rogue’s stomach drops. “Wait… you? You’re one of them?”

The use of the word ‘them’ puzzles her. “One of who?”

Gunfire shatters the living room window before Peter can answer, a barrage of bullets embedding themselves into the far wall just left of their heads. Rogue drops down below the window immediately, not bothering to bite back an angry curse as rifle fire peppers the kitchen cabinets. Whoever’s taking the shot isn’t one of Max’s, that’s for damn sure-- no one in Max’s circle would waste so much ammo. Hell, no one in Max’s circle would have missed in the first place.

Peter has taken cover beneath the counter, one hand pressed to a red stain in his side, and Rogue makes her decision then and there.

It takes her four shots to take out the sniper, perched in the 12th story window of an adjacent apartment building. His position is shit, predictable and well within range of her handgun-- he was clearly a novice, possibly an independent contractor hired by the client, possibly someone after Peter for a different reason altogether. However, it’s crystal clear that she’s not the only one who’s been watching the doctor these past few weeks, and it won’t be long before someone else comes after him to finish what the dead sniper couldn’t.

Rogue figures they have maybe fifteen minutes before the cops show up. Just enough time to find a safe space to lay low. She holsters her weapon and strides over to Peter, unable to completely ignore the twinge of concern that kicks up in her chest at the sweat beading on his forehead.

The doctor winces, hissing out a short, pained breath before looking up at her with blue eyes filled with uncertainty and just the tiniest bit of hope.

“You’re not here to kill me?” he asks, and she remembers the way he’d looked at her before, back at the coffee shop when she was just a pretty girl he may or may not have wanted to know better.

She looks at him and sees a million futures she could have had, if either of them were different people-- happy ones where they find each other safe and sound and she gets to hear how his laughter evolves as he grows older. Futures like that had always felt like a closed road before.

Rogue decides to forge a new path.