I saw them from across the field, but I knew I was right. I knew it was him. I felt a twinge in my gut and my vision wavered before I caught myself, all but dropping onto a bench next to me. The anxiety was still there, even after all these years. He was the last person I wanted to see.

And yet I couldn’t look away; staring across the green at his obnoxious outfit, his matted red hair. He had changed so little since I had last seen him. How perfectly annoying he appeared, now. How perfectly… but who was that next to him? It was only then I realized he had not been alone— a stranger to me stood opposite, locked with him in conversation. Was this his new target? A new victim to use and praise and drop as if they were nothing?

The anxiety was pushed aside by a sense of duty. If I did not warn or get in the way somehow to alert them of his past, I would be no better than him. I would be aiding him. I had to. My legs and mind and bones cried out in protest, my stomach performing a complex series of Olympic jumps and flips, but my racing heart knew I must. I rose and walked towards him.

“Fox. Been a while.” My hands were sweating, heart all but clambering through my esophagus, but I tried and prayed to look dispassionate.

His head snapped to me, eyes wide and confused upon recognition. “Brennan. Hi. What are you doing here?”

“What are YOU doing here? This your new project?” I said, and moved to stand at the stranger’s left

“This is Aoife. We were just leaving.” His thin mouth, stuck still in its endless smirk, enraged me. A part of me recognized that once he had been handsome, but now all I saw in him was venom. Inhumanity.

He put out his hand for theirs, but I placed mine on Aoife’s arm and held them back.

It was now or never: “Why did you leave?”

He froze— more or less. His expression hardened and his eye twitched slightly, his left hand still waiting, floating in air. “What?” “What did I do? What was it? Or did you not have a reason, just wanted to hurt me.”

“Now isn’t a good time, Brennan. We’ll catch up.” He said, and grabbed Aoife’s hand, and yanked them towards him, but I held on tight, stopped them again.

I looked Fox dead in the eye. “Don’t go with him. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.” I looked then to Aoife. “I don’t know what he’s—“ It was the first I’d really looked at them, into their eyes, and I was jolted by what I saw.

There was real fear there; a glistening wetness that told me there was something I was missing. Silently, they were crying out for help. I looked again to Fox, my brow furrowed.

It was only then I noticed the odd bulging in his jacket pocket, a protruding shape in the material. His right hand had not moved this whole time, planted firmly within that pocket. Holding that thing.

Fox sighed a cursed and the gun turned to aim at me. “You shouldn’t have done that Brennan. Now, you’re both going to come with me, no more stalling.”