[FIN] peaceful encounters (Elisabeta)

[Quill]

It was a peaceful day with blue skies and sunlight that seemed to make everything in the garden more green than it actually was. It wasn't exactly warm, but it wasn't to the point where Quill could see his own breath. It was more like there was a general crispness to the air about him. It was a nice crispness, one that when it brushed bare skin chilled it and gave the sensation that one was alive. It reaffirmed mortality but not in a morbid way. Quill liked it like this.

He sat on a bench in the garden looking at the flowers as the last of the bees buzzed about before winter set in on the area. They wanted to get all of the food, it seemed, before everything frosted over. At least that was what it was like up north where the Canadian native came from. Here things were a little different and he was still a little disorientated by the seasons. It was still crisp, though, and that was fine.

The Os Special Operative sat on the bench with a bottle of water in his hand and a half of a sandwich laying in its wrapper on the bench beside him. He had bought them from the cafe and come out here to enjoy the nature, only to realize he wasn't as hungry as he had thought. So he'd eaten his fill and left the rest to sit for now while he studied one particular bee as it fed on a flower growing from a pot that sat beside the bench. Curious little things.

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

Elisabeta trapped through the garden, a sulky sort of pout on her usually smiling face. It had only been a day sense her last training session with Dimitri, but she still wasn't over the sting of how badly he'd beaten her ass all over those training mats. She still had a few bruises along her abdomen from his kicks and punches-which she had come to realize were probably just a fourth of the power he could have hit her with. The only thing good she was able to take away from all of it was that he wasn't even trying when he beat her, and so it meant she needed to work harder. Damn....so nothing good came from it at all.

It was in a fit of anger that she'd stormed from The Agency's HQ that morning, hating even being within the same building with Dimitri. She needed space from everything and so she left and began making her way downtown. It seemed like a good place to be when you were in such a bad mood. Why? She had no idea. The only time she ever came down here was when she was in the mood to go the nightclub and well....it wasn't night, so that wasn't really an option.

In other words, she reached her destination with nothing to do but walk around. That's exactly what she did. For four hours. But all the time she was lost in her own mind, letting her feet take her through the area without caring to take a look around. It was then she tripped and landed in some sort of flowerbed that she came back to reality. She blinked her beautiful blue eyes and gasped up at the sky. It's clarity was surprising with the chilly weather. She'd expected a gray sky or at least a few drifters here and there. But no, instead it was perfect ocean b-"BEE!"

She screeched loudly as the tiny little insect landed lazily on her nose. It's black little butt was facing her, and so she could see it's stinger with perfect clarity. It began to wiggle, making the stinger move in a sort of circle as if to say "Hi, I'm a bee, and if you move I will dig my enhanced buttocks into some part of your skin and die before you even have the chance to stomp on me."

"Help..."

[Quill]

Quill's silent observations of his own bee were interrupted as he heard a shrill scream. Ironically it was about a bee, as well. He glanced up and saw a girl standing still as the grave with a bee on her nose. He couldn't help but smile at the situation, but knew better than to laugh in her face about it. Some people were afraid of bee stings, so he couldn't exactly blame her for being afraid of the one threatening to sting her pretty little nose.

Quill reached down into the pot he'd been observing and grabbed the stem of one of the flowers. "Don't mind me," he said casually to the bee he'd been observing moments before as he plucked the flower from the pot, a pretty white thornless rose. He stood up, twirling the stem of the flower in his fingers and smelling it as he stepped over to the girl. "Just stay still for a moment longer," he said with a friendly smile. He slowly brought the rose up to her face and with a gentle push nudged the bee. It hopped onto the flower and started to sniff around there.

Quill raised a finger to his lips motioning for her to stay quiet and still for a moment longer as he took the rose with the bee on it over to the pot and tipped the rose so the bee fell onto another plant. He then turned back to the girl, twirling the rose and smiling. "They're rather friendly if they get what they want," he said, twirling the rose once more before holding it out to her. "This is for you," he said, his smile quite genuinely friend. "A memento of you death-defying encounter."

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

She was on the verge of tears as she watched the bee start to crawl all around her nose, getting closer to her eyes or toe the edge. She hoped it would just fly off on it's own, cause God new she wasn't about to take the chance of making it angry and essentially make it sting her.

What made her m ore nervous, however, was the fact that she had suddenly developed the need to sneeze. From the itch of it she could tell that it would probably be a rather vicious one. If this thing didn't fly away from her soon, she'd end up sneezing and then landing on the ground with the darned thing sticking up out of her nose like some sort of awful piercing.

A gentle voice breached through her panic. She managed to unlock her gaze from the little beast on her nose, and when she looked up she saw someone that looked familiar, but she couldn't quite place how. She met his eyes and watched, afraid to speak, as he lifted the bee from her nose. She wanted to squeak with relief, but he motioned for her to stay quiet and so she watched as he carefully placed the bee on another flower.

It was stunning to her, how easily he had saved her from the pain of the bee. So stunning, in fact, that she didn't even have to sneeze anymore. Elisabeta smiled at him thankfully and as he spoke to her, she took the rose with blushing cheeks, feeling silly for ever having been so afraid of such a small thing. Her heart was still pounding though.


"Oh...thank you. I feel so silly now. I would have been so easy just to brush it off. I guess I just froze..."

[Quill]

Quill couldn't help but smile further when he saw her cheeks redden. He was not a womanizer by nature, but when he had a flower in his hands and had just saved a pretty girl from a dangerous beast he couldn't help but act on the opportunity. So he had presented her with the flower as a gracious act. Plus he liked to see a pretty girl blush, he couldn't lie on that part.

"Don't worry, not everyone reacts so well to bees as you had. Didn't you know bee stings are the leading cause of deaths in America?" he said as a friendly joke. There was nothing in his tone of voice saying that he was teasing her. More like trying to make her feel much more comfortable about the situation and what had happened. Benevolence and all that.

"Come over here, sit down, you must be pretty shaken up after such an encounter." he said, this time with a hint of teasing, but only playful teasing. He motioned over to the bench he'd been sitting at, marked as his spot by the uneaten half sandwich and bottle of water. He debated whether to offer him the half sandwich but decided not to. Who would accept food from a complete stranger, even if they had just disarmed a live bee situation. So he just motioned to the bench. "I'll prevent any more bees from harming you."

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

Oh, he was a sweet one.
And charming to boot.

She widened her eyes at his comment and gasped with mock fear, putting her free hand hand on his arm softly. "Well I guess I owe you my life, sir." She purred at him, her accent thickening slightly. Her palm cupped-rather unexpectedly-around a muscular bicep.

He wasn't as massively ripped as Dimitri had been, you couldn't even tell he had a build through his shirt, but his muscles were firm enough to give the impression that he worked out and it worked. She hid her surprise by sniffing her rose. It was sweet and fresh. Much better than the kind you bought at the store. It reminded her a bit of home. Picking wildflowers during the budding season.

She walked with him, her hand still managing to rest lightly on his arm as she did so. The bench he mentioned was surrounded by many different sweet smelling flowers along with a half what looked to be the contents of an interrupted lunch. A pang of guilt and another blush spread through her as she looked. She was such an idiot to freak out over a bee and make him get up from a peaceful lunch. Quietly she sat down, smoothing out the sweater she was wearing.

"Sorry I screwed up your lunch. I bet you were hoping to have a quiet one away from the buzz of the city, huh?"

[Quill]

He led her over to the bench wearing a bemused grin. He had noticed her surprise despite her best attempts to hide it. Quill was a trained sniper in the elite faction of the Os, his eyes noticed practically everything, from the color of her eyes to the number of bees buzzing around on the rose bush across the path behind the bench. If it passed through his peripherals it was noticed and made its way to his subconscious where it was stored. Now, mind you, most of this stuff never came up, but when one made a job of noticing and shooting these things, their eyes were good.

He picked up the sandwich and bottle of water that were resting on the bench and laid them on the ground just to the side for later. The sandwich was wrapped up so nothing bad could happen to it. He chuckled at her grief and shook his head. "Well if I was looking for a good place to escape the buzz I may have chosen the wrong spot," he said with a little laugh as, coincidentally, a bee buzzed by, landing on a rose in the pot on the far side of the bench. Quill sat down himself and leaned back, relaxing. "But I'm not one to hasten away the some pretty company."

He glanced down at the sandwich. It was a turkey sandwich made that morning and stored in a small refrigerator in the cafe near the garden until it was bought. The halves were individually wrapped, which was a slight touch that made Quill so inclined as to revisit that cafe. He was a man who worked on call and moved a lot, so he liked to be able to sum up his lunch quickly and move out, keeping any leftovers safely wrapped up. Fortunately today he'd requested completely off, just to relax, so unless Telum decided to explode a nearby building he was safe to relax.

"Are you hungry? I have half a turkey sandwich," he offered, deciding that since they were individually wrapped it'd be fine to offer to her. "I've already had my fill, so don't worry," he said, to tie up any worry she might have.

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

She giggled at his joke and blushed at his comment. Again. Sigh, and they weren't even forced ones. Oh she needed to be around better company more. Grinning she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear while she glanced down at her shoes. She toed at the pathway for a moment before looking back up at him. Her sapphire gems met his dark orbs.

They reminded her of the night sky. Just after the sun has left the horizon and could still give off enough light so you could make out the shapes and figures of others. Not dark enough that there were stares out, but enough to have a tent to it. They made her peaceful. Peaceful. Hah, that wasn't a word she used often. Especially to describe her feelings for strangers. Oh boy. What had she gotten herself into this time.

Elisa pulled herself from her thoughts as he asked her a question. Glancing down at the sandwich she scrunched her nose slightly, but continued to smile. Poultry in America tasted weird to her. They had a very chemical taste to them that she couldn't seem to get past no matter how it was cooked or prepared. It was all gross.

"Mm, no thanks. I'm not really the turkey kind of girl. Thank you very much though." For a moment she hesitated, but decided to continue. "I'm...Ana." She decided to go with a name that fit her accent. "What's your name?"

[Quill]

Quill nodded at her refusal of his sandwich. He was a complete stranger who had saved her from a bee, it made sense for her to refuse the sandwich. She did it with such grace, though, he had to admit it was nice. It wasn't like he was hurt by her refusal and that was clear on his face. It was more a quiet indifference; if she wanted the sandwich she could take it and if she didn't want it she could say no. He wasn't one of those guys who would be hurt if his every request was not met positively.

"Marshal," he said, quickly cycling through his typical aliases and offering her perhaps one of his more favorite ones. He was an Os Special Operations agent, he went by Quill for two reasons: it was a code name to easily recognize him, and he couldn't really remember his birth name. Still, Quill was his codename and anyone in Os would recognize it, and thus anyone who was anybody in Telum probably heard it at some point. It wasn't the safest thing to give it out in public. Not that he suspected her, but it might put her in danger, so the alias was more for her safety.

He took note, also, of her accent. European, he gathered, though it was slight enough that it could come from a number of places. That wasn't important, really, but he was subconsciously analyzing everything so of course that didn't escape his notice either. All this, of course, processed in the split second it took for her to introduce herself, so there wasn't much delay between his introduction and his next action.

He gave her a slight bow, the best one could from a sitting position to someone sitting next to them, and grinned. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ana. What brings you to these parts other than the thought of life-threatening danger at the hand of bees?" he asked casually. He wasn't one of those bashful people either, so he had no trouble maintaining eye contact during a conversation without getting to the point where it was creepy.

So he noticed she had pretty eyes.

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

She looked at him and blinked.
Marshal?

Her blank stare turned into a giggle and then she began to laugh. He couldn't be serious. A name like Marshal did not fit his sweet face. He looked more like a William or a Robert. Not Marshal for crying out loud. Marshal was the kind of name you heard of weirdos having, or kids that liked to sniff the black marker out of the scented pack. No one ever sniffed that marker! It was disgusting and smelled like ass.

He wasn't the black marker sniffing kid. He seemed more like the one that really loved the red one, but gave it up to the pretty girl he had a crush on.

For a moment she managed to contain her giggling by biting her tongue, but her cheeks were still red and her eyes sparked with humor induced tears. "You can't be serious. You're not a Marshal at all!" She started giggling again as he gave her and awkward bow, unable to contain the laughter that shook her abdomen any longer.

It was quiet for a moment as she collected herself, feeling bad she'd laughed at him. It was just so darned unexpected. She hadn't been expecting anything so far off from the look of his face it was a slight shock really.

The buzz of the surrounding bees and the soft brush of flower petals made her calm again. A familiar lullaby she'd learned from a young age. The rose he'd given her was still in her hand and she looked down at it trying to remember something her mother had once told her about the message that flowers carried. It had confused her. How could flowers talk to us? But as soon as her mother explained it she became fascinated. Each color told a different story. The white rose he'd given her, for example, could mean many a thing depending on what the giver was trying to say. The one she hoped it could be was secret admirer. The romance and charm of it was every little girls dream.

"What?" She'd been brought out of her daze at the sound of his voice. It was quiet and she liked that she hadn't been startled out of her thoughts like she might have been with a deeper or higher voice. "Oh! Well, I...I got bored being at home. I needed to get out and breath in some fresh air."

[Quill]

She tried to suppress it but Quill could see it coming even before she started laughing. He wasn't hurt; it took a lot to hurt Quill's emotions. But her laughter did make him consider his choice of alibi. It'd worked before, but perhaps not on this type of company. Why had he chosen it here? He'd been thinking during his lunch about his family, in particular one of his uncles. Real neat fellow, the kind of uncle that took you skydiving (which he did at one point). That uncle had been named Marshal. That was why Quill preferred that name.

The silence afterward, what one would consider awkward were they normal, which Quill was not, saw her get lost in a daze. He studied her carefully from the corner of his eye, not looking right at her because it was one of the things that people found creepy. He didn't feel attached to humanity, but that didn't stop him from understanding the ups and downs of humanity and what people prefer and disapprove of. So through his trained sniper's eye he studied her until she snapped out of her daze and gave him her reason for being out here.

But that question had long since passed through Quill's mind. He was moving on to another one, formed around the analysis of her daze, how she stared so dreamy eyed at the flower. He was toying with some ideas in his mind, based around the thought that by the way she was looking at the flower she was a romantic sort of girl. But then that wasn't uncommon in humanity, many people dreamed of romantic scenarios. He remembered one particular dream he'd heard before, based around those old James Bond movies.

"Truth be told it isn't my name," he said, grinning both at his plan and the subterfuge behind it. Shade the truth with the truth, it was something he'd learned a while ago. "Really I'm somewhat of a secret agent working with an anti-terrorist cell," he said with a little chuckle. With the popularity of those old 007 movies women dreamed of being swept off their feet by a dashing and charming secret agent. Little did Quill know...

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

She laughed and squeezed his arm.

It was the only thing she could do at a moment like this. If he was telling the truth, well then he was just another Os agent that she could trust. If he wasn't, then he was either just some citizen that was trying to be funny and charming or he was a Telum agent out sniffing around for other Os agents to take captive.

It didn't matter what it was because at this point she couldn't let him know anything about her. She had to be the sweet perfect citizen that was just going about her day.

"Well then, I'm going to assume you're Mr. Bond and you're about to sweep me off my feet with yet another slightly cheesy joke and a cute smile?" She grinned at him teasingly and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Well, Mr. Bond, I have to say that I am not as easy as those other women you've been known to charm into your arms."

Still grinning still pretending she watched 'Marshal' with careful eyes. Even looking at him now he wasn't anything out of the ordinary. No huge muscles that might indicate he's overly obsessed with his body or has a need for such strength. He didn't walk stiffly or talk bluntly like some members of the Os tended to do. His personality wasn't loud and obnoxious like a Telum agent and she suspected that if he were a Telum agent he'd have said it by now. That left one question:

Citizen or Os?

[Quill]

That had sparked a reaction, and she had squeezed his arm. He grinned at her laughter, noticing a flicker of something in her eye. Recognition? Curiosity? He shrugged the thought off, storing the note in his subconscious. When eyes flicker, the pupils dilate and whatnot, it could mean a number of things. Perhaps she was just remembering the Bond movies, as she immediately jumped to them when identifying him.

He grinned as the watched her laugh, then reached out and gently stroked her cheek with a smirk. "Well Ana, easy or not Bond always gets the girl," he said coyly before standing up and stretching. There was something odd about this girl that he was starting to notice. Not so much odd about her personality or her appearance, but something odd about what she did. She made him feel... more human than most. It was nice.

"Come, I can't stay here in case someone overheard me," he said with a grin. "I'd call my car but it'd have to come all the way from the penitentiary, so how about we go for a nice afternoon walk under the sun?" he asked, offering her his hand to help her up. He didn't have anywhere to put the sandwich, but he had no doubt it would feed a hungry mouth no matter what happened to it.

Bond, James Bond, he thought to himself, even tacking a Sean Connery accent to the voice in his head at the thought. If only it were that easy.

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[Elisabeta Sovu]

His hand brushed her cheek so softly she barely felt the skin of his fingers. Butterflies, as soft as his fingers, brushed against the inside of her stomach as excitement and surprise made her heart beet faster. She stared up at him with her mouth hanging open slightly. He really did know how to charm the shoes right off a girl didn't he? She couldn't really tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that goosebumps prickled across her skin as well as a smile across her lips.

Quietly she watched him stretch, wondering what lay under that baggy hoddie he'd decided to adorn for the day. By the feel of his arms it would probably turn out to be a delicious amount of muscle. Her mind took her to a place she should probably avoid during public appearances, but she couldn't help it. He sparked something inside her that she had never really felt before. It was different from all the men she had, had to woo over the years. There was a certain tactlessness that made her want to clutch onto him with all the strength she had, never to let him out of her site or grip again.

His hand appeared in her line of sight and she started to reach for it on impulse, her mind still processing what it was he'd been say-Holy Mother of God! She jerked into a standing position and stared at the man across from her, their hands still interlocked loosely. She'd been too stunned to do more than stand and now that she'd done that she couldn't really figure out the best path to fallow on this one. It was...surprising. It seemed Mr. Charming over there had a whole bag of tricks that never ceased to amaze her.

"I...you..." She stumbled and stopped, taking moment to clear her throat and start again. "What department?"

[Quill]

Quill blinked at her sudden outburst and suddenly things made more sense; namely that flicker he'd seen in her eyes earlier, at mention of being a secret agent. His ploy to hide the truth behind the truth didn't work simply because she knew the truth. How ironic. He couldn't help but grin at the sheer amount of shock displayed on her face, mouth agape as she tried to fetch the right words for the situation.

Quill, of course, handled it smoothly. He was a special operative, he handed everything smoothly because the one time he didn't it could cost him his life, or in this case the life of his fellow Os Agent. Were there any Telum nearby, though he suspected there weren't, the matter at which she was standing there in such shock could possibly draw attention. It wasn't much of a problem, but Quill had enough experience to know that in these cases the slight chances are the ones that happen.

So he squeezed her hand reassuringly, taking it with confidence and leading her off. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you," he said with a smirk, drawing her forward. Hopefully that would be enough for her to figure it out, particularly with all the Bond references floating about. "Let's not make a spectacle of it, lest we draw attention," he said quietly as he drew her close. It wasn't like he was being mean; his words were authoritative but not harsh, he kept them gentle in hopes to give her confidence. He didn't know which department she was, so he wasn't sure if she was used to field work and keeping up disguises.

"If you keep your mouth open in shock I might have to kiss you," he said with a wink as he turned and drew her away from the bench and along for their walk, remaining gentle and carefree the entire time.

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