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True to his word, it took Evan five minutes to shower, patch his leg up again, and emerge from the room in the spare suit. Getting a second one had been a good call, since the first pair of pants had a bloodstained hole in them, but he drew the line at putting the tie back on. The shoes--which had been salvageable--were bad enough.

He came out of the bedroom still tugging his sleeves into place. "Are you about--Jesus ******** Christ Sasha what the ******** did you do?" Clearly, he hadn't expected Sasha to be so murdery in the five minutes he had been gone.

Evan stared open-mouthed at Sasha, so shocked at her that it took a moment for words to actually become clear over the mantra of holy s**t holy s**t holy s**t playing on an endless loop in his head. "You killed a civilian," he started, reluctantly pulling his gaze from Sasha to meet the dead gaze of the woman on the floor.

"That's not--you can't just--" Evan sputtered, taking a deep breath and holding it long enough for his brain to start working again. Okay. Okay. Dead body on the floor. Adapt. Flip out later.

"You can't just kill someone for cutting me," he tried again, one thought at a time, and though that particular one wasn't the one that needed to be dealt with first, it stood out most. Horrified as he was, that her reaction to someone stabbing him was homicide was almost...sweet, and he couldn't say for certain that his wouldn't be the same if their situation had been reversed.

He could, however, and did say, "Besides, it's my job to take the hit so you don't have to, and now what the hell are we going to do with her? Racking up a body count wasn't one of the mission objectives!"

"She was bound to a chair and terrified," Evan shot back. "She wasn't a threat, and now any other last-minute things we may need to know--like what her other friends are armed with--we just have to guess at and hope they don't know how to use them better than she did."

Deep, calming breaths. They could figure out what to do with the body at some point between the time they went and got the artifact and the time they reported back to Deus. First things first. "Who the hell is Vivienne?" Evan asked, quiet and controlled. "She wasn't in the dossier."

"Because you killed her," Evan reminded Sasha bluntly, unwilling to indulge her temper tantrum. He knew Sasha had been a little different since her return from Scotland, but he hadn't expected this.

"How do you even know so much about this Vivienne? And why does she look like you? Do you have a twin or something?" Evan crossed his own arms right back, stubbornly planting his feet. They had a little while, he supposed, until they had to get rid of the thief, and there was no reason why Sasha couldn't spend her portion of that time telling him what he wanted to know. So there.

Evan's brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to process what Sasha was saying. He knew he shouldn't have left her there alone despite her insistence. He remembered noting that she had seemed different the first time he had seen her after that but hadn't been able to figure out why; now the why made sense, but the how...

"How does that even happen?" Evan asked, frowning. His initial horror at seeing the dead body on the floor was neatly tucked just beneath this new puzzle, put away for now but ready to assert itself at a more appropriate time. "Are you still...you?"

Things like body-switching didn't happen to normal people, but the circumstances they found themselves facing on a regular basis made something like that sound almost normal. Freaky Friday s**t, specifically, was why Evan made didn't drink coffee on the island that he didn't make himself. It would be easy to write Sasha's experience off as something similar, but this was permanent and different.

He watched Sasha put her shoes on, letting his eyes wander up a body he had gotten to know so well. He had never questioned her character until today. She was strong, and she was beautiful, and--once, she had made him abandon his self-imposed vigil and took care of him when he hadn't thought to. She understood his demons and his anger because she had some of her own. She had just killed a woman for daring to harm him, and though he was still horrified and it was seriously overkill, the idea behind it was...almost sweet.

He didn't know how much of that was Sasha and how much, if any of that, was lingering traces of Vivienne, but, he decided as he finally met her eyes, he was okay with who she was. He liked who she was, just the way she was. He still wanted to know everything, and he would, at some point, sit her down and question her until his curiosity ran dry, but for now, they had a job to do and it was just easier to focus on that than on--everything else.

"I don't know," Evan replied, still troubled, still processing. "It was a dumb question. C'mon, let's get this done. We can deal with...everything else later." He held his hand out to her, palm up, inviting her to take it.

Evan turned Sasha's apology over in his mind as he gently squeezed her hand. She was sorry for upsetting him, which he could appreciate, but she didn't seem at all remorseful about having killed another human being. He had killed people before Deus in life-and-death situations for his own safety and that of others, but it wasn't something he was particularly proud of. He didn't reflect upon those times with any kind of pride. Killing a woman for giving him a relatively minor injury that was healing even as they stood there holding hands with her body only feet away, that was...trivial. Her death hadn't been necessary, but it didn't look, to Evan, like Sasha felt the same way.

He also couldn't say that he wouldn't have reacted the same way if their situations had been reversed. He was there to keep her safe, after all, by any means necessary. For all that he loved killing monsters, actual people were another story. He would have done it if he had to, but he wouldn't have felt any kind of comfortable with it.

"Don't worry about it," he said, tugging Sasha towards the door. "Tell me how you want this to play out."

Evan nodded. "Okay. Good plan."

He hoped they wouldn't have to force their way in. He hoped, treacherously, that that Sasha would be able to keep her cool long enough for them to get the job done and get out of there. He didn't want to have to defend their targets from her, but he didn't want to stand in her way, either.

The trip to the thieves' room wasn't long, but was made longer by their silence.