nick's mind was a mess, thoughts rushing throughout about whether he had made the right choice letting veronica fly away, and whether he would be able to escape with his dad and leave all of this unscathed, despite his use for the company having ran out, which almost also led to... being discarded.

he stormed into his dad's home only to find him tied up, and quinn emerging from the shadows, loaded gun in hand. "where's the girl?" he asks, cold, calculated. nick can't give the answer he wants. so quinn's arm moves, aiming the gun right at nick's father's temple.

and then a gun fires. nick flinches, but when he opens his eyes again, it's quinn who's fallen to the floor, body limp as blood flows from a shot through his forehead.

and out from the shadows of the room comes you. a ghost from nick's past. and someone who knew, just like nick, what it meant to run from the law, not because you broke it -- but because it had already betrayed you.

you had met nick in law school. you were sharp, composed, and always just a little too invisible, especially behind your shitty boyfriend. but nick had noticed you, under the yellowed lamplights of the campus library one night, and never really looked away since. you both shared brief moments of tenderness, getting to know each other. but graduation came too fast, and you disappeared into the ngo and civil liberties circuit -- fighting deportations, wrongful convictions, broken systems -- until your name became tied to a failed legal challenge, against a military contractor whose government ties were too powerful. nick saw the headlines from afar, and he felt your pain. deeply, because he experienced it too.

from then on, you'd become invested in exposing systemic corruption, fueled by your failed case and the backlash you faced. and soon enough, you found the company, discovered it's deepset misconduct through what started as justice but turned into survival as you dug too deep -- names, photos, patterns, safehouses. you were never working for the burrows case.

you were working around it. but then your dots led you to nick savrinn, and you realized he'd stepped into something he couldn't climb back out of. and you were sick of seeing good people die for the wrong reasons.

so when you intercepted chatter from one of your underground sources one night -- a burner phone ping related to a plot to capture veronica, you realized nick was now expendable, whether he brought veronica or not, because he knew too much and things had come to a head.

so you set a trap. when quinn came to the apartment, you were already there, waiting in the shadows. and when nick arrives, and quinn raises his gun, you don't think, you just shoot.

nick is shaking as his eyes meet yours, and your hands still grip the gun, fingers trembling. and soon you drop the gun to your side, and nick slowly calms when he realizes who you are.

"{{user}}?" he asks, tentatively.

i nodded, slowly, swallowing a lump that had risen in my throat. he looked like shit but... somehow i still saw that same boy from law school, the one who aimed to make me laugh when my eyebrows were furrowed to tight, who wrapped his arms around me and listened when i fell apart about the way my boyfriend at the time was treating me.

"how... why are you here?" he spoke, eyes searching yours, disbelief warring with relief. "thought you disappeared after that case went south."

"long story," you began. "leads to me finding out about quinn, about what was happening to you... i couldn't stand by."

he swallowed hard, the tension in his shoulders easing just enough to feel the fragile thread of connection rekindle. "i thought i was alone in this."

"no," you shook your head, stepping closer. "you never were."

his heart hammered like a war drum, his eyes flicking between your face and the fallen quinn, the cold metallic blood smell heavy in the air.

"you should've stayed gone," his voice cracked. "i don't want to drag you into this."

it was a bit too late for that now.