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[ New York City, New York ][ 10:48 p.m. EST]

There was really no reason that Clerise would have heard from her father - but until very recently, Mimsy believed there was no reason that her father would not show up to a dinner invitation from his daughter that he had not seen in years, so it was within the realm of theoretical possibility.

"I'm not technically from..." No, this was not the time for that variety of pedantry. "Sorry. Yes."

Was she okay?

"I think that it was purposeful," she admitted, her voice softening, barely audible against the festivities surrounding her. "What does that mean?"

[ 11: 59 PM EST ] [ Dunstan, FL ]

"Thank you, I'm sure she'll love it."

9!

And he averted his eyes from that proud grin, shy and self-conscious, towards the little boy with his jaunty hat until she became a part of that tableau also.

8!

And hadn't he always had a weakness for redheads? He'd have come back in here day after day anyway, even if it weren't for the way she smiled at that little boy and made him pin vague wishes to her in the way that we do, sometimes, pin wishes to absolute strangers.

7!

And he was waiting there, stupid, his credit card in one hand and the take-out container in the other, and in a few seconds he stretched out an idle fantasy wherein he wrote his phone number down on the receipt before he left, where he got a three AM text with a smiling face. It had been--what--two years? since he'd so much as touched a woman but the thoughts weren't running down those lines but down the lines of a single text message in the dark of his sleepless room, of a bright alert on his silent phone, of his hands (unshaking) gingerly picking out a reply.

6!

He watches her clap her hands excitedly for her little boy and he thinks of her doing the same for Tuesday, but she's no one. She's just some beautiful stranger who's probably an expert at ignoring phone numbers on receipts, and they've probably got nothing in common and there's nothing here for him, just a vessel into which to pour all of his vague regrets and unformed hopes for a normal future that he's only just now learning to make for himself, that he learned to make for himself all on his own.

She's nobody to him; he's nobody to her. The only thing he'll write on the receipt, next to a devastatingly generous tip, will be Happy New Year. There's a new Waffle House six minutes up the road. He'll take Tuesday there, when her need for real waffles not the square ones strikes.

5!

He's not watching the ball drop. He's watching her, another what-if in a world of what-ifs, and she's nobody to him but the shape of the things he's not strong enough to ask for. He'll remember it later: a splash of bright color on a blurred and empty canvas, a nebulous and unformed diner counter, a hazy backdrop of grill and festive New Year TV screen, receding desaturated and pale behind the vividity of her bright red hair and the little boy's flushed cheeks, of their matching and devastating smiles, of the moment she glances back towards her strange, silent, awkward customer. A momentary image, a ghost in natural colors, preserved for him, for revisiting only a little wistfully, sometimes, in the lonely future in which he has forgotten how to touch people and be touched.

Some other world. Some other life.

[ 12:00 AM EST ] [ Dunstan, FL ]

For a moment he thinks she means the free food, or maybe the mess she's made, but he realizes what she means and for a second he thinks he'll take her up on it, that he'll be brave, and in a delirious moment he wonders what she smells like, whether she smokes and it lingers on her, whether her hair smells pink and girlish under the diner stink clinging to her clothes, and he could have the answer and it's such a small thing, so harmless, but it's this that shakes him of it. It's a small thing. So harmless. He wants someone to touch him small and harmless so badly that it buckles him, and he knows, knows, that he'll be afraid if someone does.

He plays dumb.

"I won't tell a soul," he says, lofting the little take-out container. And he smiles lopsided again and this time he doesn't divert it away, just lets her see it, all quiet gratitude for a small and simple act of unspeakable kindness.

[ 12:02 AM EST ] [ Dunstan, FL ]

(Later he'll drive to the gas station down the road where he'll park and have another cigarette, absently staring off into the ugly Florida scrub on the other side of the ditch. Later he'll think it over and his feeling will be mostly relief, more than regret. Later he'll crawl into bed, light-footed through the dark house and shushing the dog to not wake up his sisters nor his daughter, and he'll sit in the dark of his room and he'll fall asleep with his silent phone still in his shaking hands. Later, though. He won't mourn it. There's nothing to mourn that he hasn't already, many times over, and they were all things inside himself.)

He does turn around, though, at the door, or he starts to, anyway, and the words are on his lips but he knows he isn't going to say them, especially not now that he's left a frankly exorbitant tip, an embarrassingly huge tip that ensures he'll never be able to come back in good conscience. And then he leaves, a frail little figure bundled into a fine coat under the single parking lot light and huddled over his lighter, a wisp of cigarette smoke already following him by the time he gets into his car and leaves, just as much a stranger as when he'd arrived.

(Another world, another life because in this one he'd not had anything to lose that he hadn't lost already. Tell me something good, he murmurs, and he's sloppy-drunk and painful and clingy and hopelessly in love with her.)

Tonight is, in fact, no different.

[ Backwater, Florida ] [ 9:37 PM EST ]

What is the price of a life?

Disassemble and dismantle the emotions behind the act. Strip it down to its bone, flay it open.

It is simple.

A heart stops beating, one way or another. Whether it's from disease or dismemberment, that is all it takes. One second they are alive, the next they are not. It's just an insurgent, they were doing the wrong thing. Isn't that easy? Isn't it cheap? A few seconds, at most, to put the bullet in the brain. To slide the knife between their ribs as if it belongs there, as if the victim says with their final exhalation: it's like coming home.

It's cheap, and it's easy. Doing the right thing, that is. For the right cause, for justice, for love of country. For allegiance to all of the above. For allegiance above all else.

But not every life taken is an insurgent's, and not every death is quite so swift. Hours, days, weeks spent tracking the kill, like a hunter follows a deer. Silent. Undetected.

Relentless.

Bashmet is, in a word, efficient, and Spetsgruppa Zaslon is too. In two short years, the things he's done would (and has) fill a spiral notebook; each categorized life taken, each heartbeat slowed down into oblivion. He thumbed through the pages, glasses low on his nose, reading it like one might a diary. Every entry is marked with a date and a list, if not precise then approximated as accurately as possible. Stealth operations from South Africa to Iraq to Ukraine to Saudi Arabia to Cuba.

He was a spectre first and a soldier second: his official records claim he left the military at age 20 after a single year in Spetsgruppa Vega but nothing could be further from the truth. He is 22, now, on the verge of 23, and he has seen more death and war in times of almost-peace than most.

What is the price of a life?

Estimate five minutes, on average, for the actual death. Estimate 36 hours, on average, for the chase. Some were much longer, but most were significantly shorter. Most come out to cost less than 500 rubles. 500 rubles and you are gone, lost to the world, a faded memory. You might not even get a gravestone. Your family will never know who killed you.

A life is worthless, and so was his. Five years, for what? Sure, he had money. Of course he did. More than he needed, more than enough to quietly live on, for a time. His clearance had been critical and his conscience was far from clear, and yet they had let him go. Bashmet had no illusions that it would be forever.

At least Merc companies stateside ate up anyone with a proficiency for a different language, and Bashmet was no exception. A year of purely work for profit, a life of contracts with articles specifically asking what should be done with his remains. A year where the risk of working overseas was immense: mercenaries got no benefits from the geneva conventions. The act of doing it for profit meant that you rescind all your rights.

It is over, now. He is done.

There is no remorse. He does not regret the work that he'd done: he'd been promoted rapidly due to his stoic nature, his ability to get the job done with minimal questions and a near perfect performance. Bashmet knew he'd been the perfect soldier, but for what. He didn't know, but it was almost liberating, to admit that. He didn't know, and he intended to find out.

It is almost a new year, and he will become something else. One and fifty thousand us dollars sat in the back of his locked trunk, inside a duffel bag next to his SVD-63 in its case and a shovel. It was time to bury his past life, and Bashmet had always been of a literal mind.

But he couldn't sit in the car forever, in this diner parking lot, thumbing through the mistakes of his past and present. The journal went back into the glove department, and he inspected himself in the mirror. Blue eyes, contacts. Beard. Trucker hat. Large coat. Barely recognisable.

Good.

Bashmet stepped into the diner, scouting on the table with the least amount of people near it. His eyes cased every exit, face devoid of anything but a blank sort of exhaustion. He sat down and removed his hat, and did not look at all at ease.

You could take the man out of the military, but you couldn't take the military out of the man.

[ La Crosse, Wisconsin - World of Warcraft ] [ 11:35 AM ]

"Oh my god, not the sad smiley. I didn't earn the sad smiley, that's just not fair," Noah mock-whined. "I mean, y'know, if that's still not enough we can negotiate." A small pause. "You said you were gonna show me how to set up a tank for a corn snake," he added, talking around the elephant in the room still.

He tapped a command and watched the Tauren on his screen break into a dance for no reason in particular.

[Party] [Sahrelian]: Yeah?
[Party] [Sahrelian]: I gotta go down for breakfast soon or my sisters are gonna bust into my room but do you wanna skype later?
[Party] [Sahrelian]: Mom was talking about going to some dumb movie but I can get out of it

[ Dunstan, Florida ] [ 9:39 PM EST ]

"Oh, getting fiesty already for the new year, huh?" The waitress grinned and swished away without further comment. Before she could get back though. Bashmet would find himself confronted with large hazel eyes and a riot of pale curls, nearly hidden by a cheap little cowboy hat as the child peered over the top of the neighboring booth.

"Vater."

[ La Crosse, Wisconsin - World of Warcraft ] [ 11:35 AM ]

"Oh my god, be grateful," and the hint of a whine was less of a hint and more of a whine. "Siblings are a pain in the a**, they're nosy and they never leave you alone." Noah had heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The last part of the complaint was voiced slightly louder just to make sure that eavesdropping parties would get the point.

[Party] [Sahrelian]: Yeah, duh~