Wild Poppy

by Victoria Johns

“I feel like such an asshole. I trusted you with me... and all this time you were lying.”

  “I wasn’t lying.”

  “You wouldn’t even tell me what you did for a job.”

  I was really hoping she’d forgotten about that. I didn’t think my previous profession was going to go over very well after her religious rant on the banks of Loch Ness. “Why is that even important now?” Penny glanced down at the gun, letting me know I wasn’t out of danger yet, but I had little choice but to come to clean. “You wanna know? I was a fucking priest.”

  Her face paled.

  “I know how you feel about men of religion, so let me emphasize the word ‘was’ in that sentence.”

  Penny paced the room, waving her gun again. “I can’t believe I let you get close to me.”

  “You let me, not Father McPhee. He doesn’t exist anyway.”

  “I opened my fucking heart to you. You crossed all the boundaries and walls I’d built to protect myself, and still, you stormed inside only to... to...”

  “To what, Penny?”

  “Break me!” She heaved the words out. “I can’t do that again.”

  “Do what?” I knew I was pushing her, and it could backfire rapidly, but I had little other choice.

  “Get close to someone.”

  “And I won’t let you leave either. You have no idea what you’ve given me either, Penny. You weren’t the only one who was lost. But your spirit, everything about you made me question the life I was running from.”

  “What were you running from?”

  “My past. Like you. What you said the day at Loch Ness unsettled me. It was like the forgiveness I’d been searching for from God no longer mattered.” The conversation I’d been dreading had begun and if she was still with me at the end of it, I’d never let her go.

  “Why did you need forgiveness from God?”

  This was it. It was time to go all in. Looking her square in the eyes, I said the words out loud. “I murdered people.”

  “So did I.” Finally, she admitted something I’d been suspicious of all along. After all, she was the same breed of spy as Shadow.

  “Hear me when I say I’ve been dead inside, and I haven’t felt this alive since... since...” I didn’t want to say it. It would be the admittance I’d never been able to make in any confessional across the land.

  “Since when?” Penny pressed.

  “Since I abandoned my faith to take revenge on my sister’s torturers.”

  Penny looked like she’d been punched, and I instantly regretted not choosing different words, better words. Not many people survived torture and those who did rarely came out the other side. “How? What happened to her?”

  “You don’t need to hear what happened to her. It hurts just thinking about it.” I looked at her, imploring her not to make me say it. “Penny, please…”

  “I need the truth.” Her voice wasn’t so harsh anymore, and I wasn’t sure who this conversation would hurt the most, but I knew I had to soften the blow for her.

  “Living with what I did to the men who abused and killed my sister is like death, but I’m still breathing. I can’t outrun it. I can’t forget it. I see them and I hear them constantly.” I looked to Penny and her eyes were watery, a little glazed. “But that’s nothing compared to what my imagination does. I can barely control that part of me. I see what she looked like when she suffered and how I chose to avenge her. That will always be with me, following me around like a shadow. I can’t outrun it and I couldn’t make enough peace with it to go back to the church.”

  “You made friends with it,” she whispered, like she was speaking from experience.

  “I made friends with that part of me, because that person, the one who inflicted pain and enjoyed doing it, is my shadow, my conscience, the real soul inside me.”

  “You can never outrun your suffering.” Her voice sounded distant.

  “No. That’s not you. I know you suffered, but your soul is good. Mine is dark. I chose the path I took. Your soul, it protected you and isn’t something you should despise or be afraid of.”

  “You don’t know that.” Her voice was barely a mumble now.

  “See, Penny, that’s the difference between us. What you went through happened to you. What I go through is because of the choices I made. Because of me.”

  It felt like she was retreating. This conversation wasn’t taking us one step forward and two steps back; this was us shuffling forward and jumping back miles in reverse.

  Suddenly, she realized that she’d lost control of what was going on here. Her mind had allowed her to focus on something other than her original end game of ending me, and she stood up, pointing the gun back at me. “Don’t lie to me. Don’t pity me. It will make me angry.”

  “Good!” I shouted at her, pushing up to my feet causing Bullet to go on full alert. “You’re angry, that means this means something to you, what we have means something to you.”

  “Stop!”

  “No. I won’t ever. Feel that anger? That’s because you’re scared. Scared of what we could be, and fear without anger is just acceptance. Take it from someone who found that acceptance was easier than the fight inside me.”

  “Stop.” The fight inside her was waning. Tears rushed from her eyes and fell down her cheeks. I was a heartbeat from taking her in my arms, gun or no gun.

  “You saved me, and you don’t even know it,” I told her honestly. “If I had a hundred years to tell you how much I struggled with the things I’d done, the betrayal of my faith, it wouldn’t be long enough, but it only made sense when I came here to check on you.”

  “Please stop. I don’t save people. I can’t.”

  “You saved yourself and I know you don’t believe in faith, but I have to believe that something, somewhere brought us together.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You can. You already are.” I couldn’t lose her now. We were nearly on the home stretch, only a gun and bullet wound between us. “I’m ready to give my life to someone, and considering the last time I said that was to my God, please hear me when I say that is the fucking truth.”

  “That’s the thing with trust, it only takes seconds to break and a lifetime to repair. What if I’m not ready? What if I can’t give you that trust again?”

  “We don’t have a lifetime, and what I did, I did in good faith.”

  She glared back at me. “Don’t preach at me!”

  “We’ve both lived lives we’d rather we hadn’t. Don’t you see the only kind of faith left is what we have in ourselves, in each other. We’ve already started something; you just need to let me back in.”

  “What good will that do? Look what we’ve done to each other?”

  I pushed up from the table, wincing as I leaned into my bad arm. “You make me want more than the what ifs and regrets, Penny. You made what I did forgivable.” She didn’t respond, so I stepped to her, praying like fuck I wasn’t misreading things and about to get another bullet hole as a reward. “Haven’t we suffered enough?”

  “If I let go of the suffering, what have I got to keep me going? If I push that aside, what’s left?”

  “Me.”

  “What if it’s not enough?”

  “Then shoot me. End my purgatory and send me to the hell I deserve to be in.” She hesitated again. “We’ve both suffered—in different ways yes, but still, we need to let our pain serve us some good.” Penny said nothing. Her grip on the gun slackened, but she didn’t lower it. “I used to come back to Scotland and call it home, but until I left this lodge and came back to it with you, I never understood what home was. It isn’t the place, or the country, it’s you. Home feels like you, and without each other, what becomes of us? We’re just surviving through the darkest things anyone should ever have to go through, alone.”

  “What if this is a mistake?” She was on the ropes, about to tap out and give in to me.

  “And what if it isn’t?”

  “I’m scar
ed, Fraser.”

  “I am, too, but sometimes to get everything you want, you have to risk everything you’ve got, and right now, the only thing either of us has that is worth anything is each other.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Penny

  “Have we talked enough now?”

  I didn’t think we had. He’d opened himself wide to me, telling me about the past, and I’d not done that. Instead, I’d pointed a gun at him.

  Fuck.

  I’d done more than that; I’d pulled the trigger. All the people I’d harmed in the past, and it finally felt like I’d taken a step too far. This man in front of me might have lied to me, but it felt like it was with the right intention, and I knew this because it didn’t feel like all the other lies I’d been told.

  Lies like… God is great. Wrong. God is used as a weapon to control people. A big fucking stick to beat you with.

  Or, you’re serving your country. Wrong. There was no way the general public would want me to do the things I did. What I ended up doing, my way of serving was just a drop in the ocean and not keeping the majority of them safe. I was serving the selfish needs of whoever sat at the top of the tree on that particular day, and it felt like their decisions were made by the flip of a coin.

  The worst lie… this won’t hurt. Utter fucking lie. It always hurt.

  Fuck.

  I’d shot him.

  All of a sudden, I hated that part of me, the very essence inside me that had kept me alive. The part of me where the gun was an extension of my body, my survival. Right now, my psyche felt wrong, out of place. For the first time my arm felt heavy, like the gun was the heaviest weight it had ever had to bear. “Oh... What did I do?”

  Fraser looked up at me, still clutching the blood-soaked towel at his shoulder. The minute he registered the panic in my voice, my demeanor, he forgot about his shoulder and rushed to me. “You’re good. Take a breath.”

  “What... I...”

  “We’re good.”

  Tears spilled over and when I raised my arms he ducked again, desperate to avoid the gun I’d forgotten I was still wielding. Like it had burned me, I dropped it to the floor, another stupid move when we both knew I hadn’t clicked the safety back on.

  “Jesus, you trying to put more holes in me?”

  He clenched the cloth again and pressed it to his shoulder, reminding me of his injury. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “Can’t do that. Bullet wounds are not common place in these parts. We’d be inviting a bucket load of attention from the police.”

  I did not want that.

  “You need sutures.” Finally, I placed my hand on his as he held the towel, hoping it would ease the burden, desperate to make it all better. Or at least begin to put right the damage I’d caused.

  “Penny, we can’t afford for anyone to come looking in our backyard. Just slap a bandage on it.”

  He was right again. “I... I could do it.”

  “You know how to stitch?”

  I nodded. “A useful skill they taught me.”

  “Medical kit is under the sink in the kitchen. What else do you need?”

  “Thread or super thin fishing wire, needle and some rubbing alcohol.” I winced as I thought about what I was about to do.

  “Fishing line is in the shed outside. Go grab it. I’ll get the rest.”

  Fraser had told me where it was and as I walked out, Bullet finally left his side, sensing the immediate threat was over for now. It hadn’t passed me by that he’d stayed by Fraser’s side throughout the whole thing, and it was about more than just protection. It was about showing me that I was wrong in how I handled it. Bullet had picked a side when it mattered, the right one too. “Forgive me, boy.”

  He barked and I wasn’t sure whether that was agreement or a reminder to get a move on because his master was still bleeding out in the house. I hunted around for a suitable gauge wire, found a pair of small pliers and some electrical snips, and ran back, Bullet overtaking me and barking on arrival. Fraser had got a bottle of vodka and a huge vat-sized bottle of Buckfast from somewhere and was stood holding a needle in a naked flame in the gas stove. While he got that ready, I cut gauze, band aids and bandage tape ready. “Good to go?”

  He reached for the Buckfast and unscrewed the lid using his teeth. “Give me a couple of minutes.” I stood and waited as he walked past me, took an unhealthy glug of it and made for the table and chairs he’d been sat at only moments ago. “Only have this in ‘cus it’s good for unblocking the sink drain and flushing it through when I’ve been away for a while.”

  “But we drank that!” I looked at him horrified.

  “I don’t remember you getting very far with it. Pass me some pills.” Fraser nodded at a pill bottle next to the vodka that I hadn’t noticed. I popped it open and indicated for him to put his palm out. When I shook a couple into it, he didn’t close it but just looked at me until another two joined them. As I put the lid back on, he threw them back and chased them down with more Buckfast.

  “Ready?”

  He lifted the bottle to his lips again and went to town on it, before slamming it back to the table. Just over half of it had disappeared and he hissed as it settled in his stomach. “Feel like I’m twelve again.”

  “Why, are you about to sleep with one of your mother’s friends?” I tried to joke but that probably wasn’t the way to lighten the mood.

  “Not for another couple of years—at twelve I was finger fucking the checkout girl around the back of the Co-op.”

  “Good God.” I was shocked. “Really? And how old was she?”

  Fraser smiled at me, and the smile told me that the pills and Buckfast were kicking in. “It was her seventeenth birthday, and when I asked her if she’d been working the fish counter, she slapped me.” I giggled, imagining the cheek of the boy far too wise for his years. “They didn’t have a fish counter,” he finished, laughing himself.

  I helped Fraser take off his T-shirt and was reminded of how handsome and rugged he was. I’d tainted that, added a scar to his beautiful form. “You won’t have steady hands if you’re looking at me through teary eyes, babe.”

  I pulled myself together, feeling ashamed that he’d caught me out in a pity party, one of my making, one I deserved. “I know. I can’t believe I lost it and did this to you.”

  “Be a fun story to tell the kids,” he mumbled and reached for the tonic wine again.

  Now I was even more freaked out. I didn’t even know if I could have kids. The device they’d given me before I went to Afghan had probably made that impossible. Although the agency were keen to use and abuse women, they didn’t want kids in the mix. We were already too emotional, and if flesh and blood you’d born into the world was involved, you’d be likely to turn or not see your mission through. Women were definitely useful, but mothers were a whole other ball game of unpredictability. “It’s gonna sting.”

  “Get on with it,” he growled.

  Picking up the vodka, I unscrewed the lid, took a mouthful myself much to his surprise, and then before he could see it coming, tipped some over his wound. Fraser flinched, hissed and turned his head in the opposite direction. As soon as the blood was washed away and the skin was clear, I could see the indented channel for a few seconds, just before the blood started to pool again.

  “What are you doing, Pen?”

  “Just looking at where I need to go.” I rushed back to the kitchen, got fresh towels, the needle and the wire, and returned before giving the bits a dab with a fresh vodka-soaked cloth. Laying that cloth on top of his wound, I left it there while I threaded the needle. “Going to have to go quick. You sure about this?”

  Without looking at me, his head jerked with an affirmative, so I removed the cloth and pinched the wound together. “Fuck!” If he thought this was bad then I was worried about what was to come. “So, where’d you learn?”

  I debated his question. He knew I’d learned in my time with the agency, but what he was after w
as more information, and if I told him, I’d have to make a commitment to tell him as much as I could of the rest of it at some point. I had no idea how much he really knew but it was definitely crunch time. Then I looked to his face and saw he needed the distraction.

  “How much did Shadow tell you?”

  “Some…Enough to make sure I treated you with care, but not a lot.” I was pleased about that, relieved even. I wasn’t sure how I’d get over the fact that he knew that Shadow had watched me being brutalized by two men. “It was part of my training, before they signed me on for an assignment.” It brought back memories and I laughed ironically. “What?”

  I pulled the thread tight over and under and knotted it. Pulled it the other way, over and under and knotted it in the opposite direction. I could see his eyes were fighting a touch of rage over the pain and he was focused on me, not what I was doing to him. I clipped the threads and moved on to the next one. “I learned on a hump of pig belly. Ironic really that I used the skill in a Muslim country on a bunch of fucking animals, people who were more unclean than the swinemeat they refused to eat. One of them asked me the same question once and I lied. Told him I’d been to medical school. Stupid really, they expected all sorts after that. The lie eventually caught up with me and I was out of my depth. I had to tell them I’d flunked out of med school and never got as far as trying to reattach an appendage. It earned me twenty-five lashes with a cane.”

  Frasers eyes squinted, widened and then pierced in anger, so while he was thinking about that, I pushed the needle back again and went for another stitch. “Benefit of sutures in the middle of nowhere in the middle east and more specifically a Muslim country, no alcohol, blunt needles and dust creates infection. I got to inflict some pain first and then watch them die anyway. Dust sutured inside a wound is a bitch.” I smiled and Fraser smiled. Not all of my time there was hell on Earth directed at me, and I learned to rejoice in the victories I found no matter how small.

  “Did you stitch anyone after you shot them?”

  “I’m still breathing, so you can take that as a no.”