Heyyyy I'm sorry for the late update Ive just been so busy. I promise to try and update quickly, as now everything gets juicy. let me know what you think! xx

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Spending the day with Merleah wasn't as bad as she had expected it to be. Apart from the questions she kept asking, Fiona didn't have to think much or be careful as to what she said to her. She could be normal, in fact, she was allowed to be normal. Plus, like she would quote from her favourite movie:

Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Her inner fangirl always sparked in times like this, which proved she wasn't just a killer machine. Proved how she too, like Merleah, was once human. Had a normal life. Except, Merleah had no life anymore, only God, Merleah and the people Fiona worked for knew what she had done to deserve death by the one she least expected it from.

Her best friend.

And it wasn't that Fiona was okay with the fact that she had to die, she wanted to find out what it was about her that the Base didn't like. Merleah had forced her to spend the rest of the time she had here in Manhattan with her, because then they would part again and then not see each other for a long time afterward. Little did she know.

"You're spending the rest of the day with me, and I'm calling over Ash, Lee and Jordan too. They all think you're dead or crazy, just like I did. And they deserve the truth, that you're alive. They went completely off it after they found out. We all did, actually" was what she told Fiona as they entered her apartment, but Fiona protested as she flung herself onto her sofa

"No, you can't tell them. You can't tell anyone, Merleah. Please. I'll be gone in three days, where's the fun in that if we can't even spend a couple of days together? "

"You're 23 for goodness sake, Hayley. Why are you still living with a guardian?"

"Do I look like I'm in the right state to be living alone? A couple of days and I'll be talking to the walls like I did in the hospital. You can't tell them, or else I'll go from here too. I can't tolerate too much pain and heartbreak, I'm trying to recover. And meeting my best friends who are like brothers and sisters to me for a day won't help." Dramatic much, she thought to herself. Nobody can know.

"Okay, I'm sorry I didn't mean any offense Hayley, but they need to know you're alive." Merleah came and sat next to her, handing out popcorn

"So tell them after I leave. Okay?" Hayley softened, staring at Merleah who sighed

"Fine." And she smiled "We all still remember you, you know"

"Really?" Hayley's voice came out in a whisper, this emotion being real. She never got a chance to think about anyone in all these years of non-stop killing and seeking revenge for her father's death, and thought maybe no one else really got to either.

"How's Kyle?" she finally asked awkwardly, and Merleah grinned

"I was waiting for you to ask. He went ballistic after you disappeared. Called into every place, every hospital, he was the one who told us all you went... you know. He got depressed, hardly spoke to anyone, so we all decided that we needed to face the truth because every one of us was the same. Kyle being a bit more than the rest of us obviously, since you two were a thing. We went out, trying to get our minds off it all, you know, it's not easy when you're best friend's father gets murdered and then you find out she's in a mental hospital and we can't even meet her to know if she's okay. But, Hayley... It's been seven years. Seven years, not days. He got over you after like six months, but didn't date anyone for quite some time after that. But there was this girl, oh wait you know her" Merleah faced her with a squint to remember "Remember that weird girl from Art Class who used to talk to her paintbrushes as if they were humans?" and Hayley's lips curved up into a small smile of recognition.

She would've laughed as she remembered, but the thought of Kyle, the one person she busied herself so much so she could NOT think about, opened up old wounds in her.

Wounds that hurt.

He was a part of her past she never liked thinking about, because he was the one person who was always there for her no matter what. So were these lot, but their relationship was different. It was magical in a way. And leaving him was the worst thing and the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.

"Anyways" Merleah continued, oblivious to Hayley's thoughts "she was really nice to him because she saw how he was closed off to everyone. So she began talking to him, she never spoke to anyone, but because they got partnered up for the semester in Biology and Kyle had no idea about anything, she helped him. And then poof. "

Merleah looked over at Hayley who was staring at the floor, her face unreadable. And then she realised "Oh, baby come here" and hugged her. Hayley felt ULTRA AWKWARD, but then her stomach fluttered and she felt a thousand miles away, from being an assassin and a twenty three year old. She felt like she was back in college, the day her and Kyle had an argument because she wasn't acting normal, the same day she had to rush home from a phone call telling her that her father was dead.

But that's what they had informed her. Although she knew that the 'work' he claimed to have wasn't normal, nor were the bloodstained suits he used to throw in the bin before entering the house after three days, Hayley having to stay over at Merleah's or her other friends'. She was so sure that there was something else, someone else behind everything. Behind her dad's death.

She stopped going to college because she fell into depression, but that depression didn't prevent her from trying to find things out. Some people had come and took her father's work stuff, for example his papers and drives she never could get a hold of. When they had asked for her permission to take them, Hayley never really saw why she had to keep them, it was his work. But she realised only a week later when she decided to look through his things that they could've been useful to her and research. And she also realised that those people were no policemen, and no lawyers. But anonymous people.

That week she had rummaged through his room, trying to find something, hoping that those weird men in suits and sunglasses had left something behind. But no. They had turned it upside down, leaving even his mattress upside down in case there was anything under, all for her to clean up.

Until she found a drive hidden inside a book she picked up from the kitchen drawer, the one he had been reading on the day when he got a phone from work. His last words were

"I'll be back in three days. And then we'll go on holiday, I promise. I'll miss you kiddo, take care of my little girl for me".

That drive held the world. The world. And his targets. All of them. As it turned out that he, was an assassin, and his last target that was not vanquished, the reason he left, the reason he was killed, was the assassin from the opposing League of Assassins.

Not any assassin. Kyle's very own uncle.