Chapter summary; Malec <— as u wonderful reader have taken to calling them :)

MAIZE

Several hours later all of them were taken to stay at a local hotel. The officers still had questions for them and said that each of their statements would need to be taken—including Ryder's, which he was not at all thrilled about.

Maize agreed and nodded off to whatever with minimal commitment—she didn't care.

Their initial accounts were jotted down by assistants of Johnson and Monroe, before they were cleared. The two agents stayed with them, saying they were not done and would need to have more discussions about the case once they were a bit more rested. Afterwards, they were driven in their vehicle and Ryder's—where Kota had been waiting in the back seat—and taken to a place to stay in rooms for the night. God knew each of them needed it.

Maize was exhausted as she found a seat at the corner of her rental room in the motel the agents had paid for on the RCMP's tab. She felt numb. She felt raging with fire. Her jacket weighed so heavily on her shoulders, where the phantom pain of the scar on her upper back had not stopped prickling in both pain and ache. She wanted to shed the leather coat, if only to relieve some of the pressure, but she found she couldn't move.

The fire suddenly swept out like a match in the wind. She was left only numb. And with her thoughts.

Somehow, she knew she was still in a state of shock. Even after all that had happened to sober her, a part of her could not believe what she had seen.

She always knew...somehow...someday...she knew her past would eventually catch up, one way or another. But she couldn't have seen it coming this time, or even how it came. With a ghost she thought had died with her old identity. But then she thought back to the room, to Alec standing before her, and the cold bite of the pistol in her hand. Perhaps not. One could never kill ones old self completely, merely burry it down in the shadows and pray against the day it surfaced.

What would she have done?

In the moment she knew she wasn't going to kill Alec. She told herself so. She had changed, and she would not kill an ally. She would not kill her detective...But even so, it near frightened her how easily they all thought she had slipped into that old persona. Even Alec from the resigned look she had seen fall in his eyes.

She closed her eyes and stood, making for the door. She couldn't do this, she needed an out, some air, anything. Anything to get away from the claustrophobic feeling she thought was closing around her. She opened the door with the intent to walk out and fast before anyone could see or stop her, but her plan fell immediately dead as soon as her forehead crashed into the hard jaw and a pair of familiar cognac eyes flashed a near exasperated look down at her.

Not now, she silently pleaded. Out of everything, he was the last person she wanted to face at the moment.

"Maize..." She refused to flinch at the deep tone his voice took, slightly husked with an edge. He was staring at her, but behind a knowingness in his eyes, there was nothing else readable. But either way, it wasn't the way he had been looking at her before this whole endearment. It wasn't the glinting, tantalizing, flickering light look she hadn't even realized she had grown so used to seeing. So much so that the dark shadow that hovered over his gaze now seemed almost unnatural.

He opened his mouth partially, but it seemed any words he thought to say were caught on the top of his tongue as his eyes met hers. For once, she wasn't sure whether or not she could tell if he was angry, conflicted, concerned, pissed off—or some grand combination too confusing to identify.

Without a word she turned her gaze forward and moved to slip past his figure but then he had grabbed hold of her wrist. It was fast, done almost before the eye could see, but the action was also gentle. She was forced to look up and meet his eyes again, and this time whatever had been there before had quelled. There was only a raging calmness in them now that almost made her want to scream out in frustration.

He should be angry at her. He undoubtedly knew enough of the truth to know that what he knew about her had been a lie. All of it. He should hate her. He had every reason now. The always short tempered detective should be furious. So why couldn't he just look it? Anything was better than the look he was giving her now, because of the false sense of hope that it rose within a small part of her.

"Where are you going?" He hasn't released her hand, and for once she made no move to pull away.

"Does it matter?" She answered quietly, shared in the same low tone he used.

His head tilted to the side ever so slightly. "It matters to me."

Her breath caught ever so slightly and she mentally cursed herself, though not once did she break eye contact.

A small upwards lift of his lip caught her attention, though it was more of a gesture than the actual thing. "You don't seemed concerned that I was about to knock on your door. Seriously..." he said as he leaned down ever so slightly. "You need to watch where your going."

His familiar banter was almost painful for her to hear.

"Alec, please..." she murmured quietly but sternly, looking down. The words hung in the air. Move.

"No." Her eyes snapped up to him again, and this time it seemed the slight smirk he gave her was genuine. "I could give you some time for peace, but for tonight, I'm selfish. I have questions, and your going to answer."

"And if I don't feel like it?" The snappy response was more of a default reaction to being ordered than anything else, but the words lacked their usual chip which made it lose it's defying edge.

Alec gave her a long look. "There have been too many lies..." he said quietly. "I think we owe each other the truth right now."

His words hit her. Harder than they should have.

They had been lied to from the very beginning—there was no way to look around that. Their entire mission to protect someone from harm had been a fabricated lie.

All to get to her, she reminded herself once again. A reminder that this was all her fault.

She closed her eyes for a moment before releasing a quiet breath, but then the small nod she gave was enough. Silently, she and the detective made their way outside, around the motel where they knew they would not be found or bothered on the empty balcony that looked over the road.

They stood that way, a near familiar position that they had taken with one another without ever really taking the time to realize it countless times before, side by side. As if it was only natural. And maybe it was.

"Yesterday was...really something," he said, and despite it all, she snorted a laugh at his causally used tone of voice.

"That's putting it lightly," she replied with a terse exhale of breath. Her eyes flickered over. She asked more quietly, "How are you doing?"

Kishan's betrayal had shocked them, and it had shocked hard—she had her own twisted knots and knives in this, but for him, who didn't, it hit him much harder than he let show. She could tell. And everything afterwards...

She closed her eyes and clenched her hands together over the banister.

Alec's response was quiet, not bitter, but empty, as if he were trying to seek some semblance of lightness to speak with but just couldn't find it within himself. He wasn't looking at her either. "How exactly do you want me to answer?"

It was the honesty in his words that had her chest clench with understanding. He didn't want to lie to her, and he didn't want to tell the truth, so he asked her for what she wanted to hear. But that wasn't what she wanted of him either.

Doing each of them a favour, she silently dropped it.

They stood close, and that was when he ever so slight shifted so he faced her. She didn't draw away, her legs felt like they was made of led, and she couldn't bring herself to even back up a step as her eyes landed a few inches from his chest. Her hand drew up and softly hovered over the place over his heart, feeling the soft brush of his dark grey shirt as she stared condemned to the area under her hand. He said nothing.

Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she kept it there, tipping her head down ever so slightly so he wouldn't see they way she closed her eyes. The metal was there, cold and deadly in her hand. The ghost of it still appalled her.

But not so much so as the eyes she had seen him wear, that had truly scared her beyond what she thought possible—beyond her fear of her past, beyond her fear of Azeal. The look that had been in her detective's eyes...

It wasn't because he believed she was going to go through with it...but the fact that he was so willing to accept it.

If it meant she would live.

It took a moment longer to notice the warmth on her hand was him placing his own over it, gently, like the tenderness of water, as he softly grasped her hand in his own against his chest. Neither of them moved from there, and Maize felt her heart hammering within her.

"Would you really?" She whispered after a moment, never taking her eyes off her own hand. "Would you really have just let them—me—kill you?"

"Would you really have gone through with it?" He asked her in turn, his soft spoken voice evenly calm.

Her eyes narrowed. "No. I wouldn't have."

"Then what does it matter?" His answer made something in her snap.

"Dammit, because, Alec!" She shouted up at him, finally looking up to meet his eyes with a burning gaze. "You idiot—I don't want you to die!"

His face remained passive. "I didn't want you to either."

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to punch him. Reprimand him. Curse him for his stupidity.

Instead her fingers drew in and clutched weakly into the fabric of his shirt, his hand still holding her in an embrace, as she shut her eyes into her bowed chin.

"Don't you realize...I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I...if I actually went through with it."

"Yes you would have. You're the strongest person I know, you wouldn't have thrown your life away so easily." His other hand was brushing at a strand of her hair. "And besides, if you did, my ghost would have come back to haunt you for it. I wouldn't have let you die either way."

She chocked on a laugh. "Selfish, manipulative bastard..." she murmured as she blink away the pricking tears at the corner of her eyes.

"Thank god damn for Ryder..." she muttered afterwards.

Alec release a breathless laugh. "Sure, whatever you say."

She smiled silently.

"Now no more lies...I'm asking you, here and now, for the truth. The real truth." His eyes were serious but gentle as he held her hand close, his gaze silently pleading with her. "Tell me who you really are, Maize. I want to hear it from no one but you. What happened 2 years ago?"