Les Chats du Guerre

14: Five Months Later /// Starting Over

You had been sidelined again from a grand treasure hunt, this time by your own volition.

And you couldn't lie to yourself. It felt awful at first. It felt like you had given up just because things had gotten too difficult, that the best thing to do was to go back and finish what you started.

Except you realized how toxic everything had become for you in the past few months. Your former boss had rapidly become your competition, Clarke had been nothing like you had wanted him to be, and Sam....oh Sam.

You had not believed the stories at first, about his capacity for violence, but you had seen it now. Learned exactly what the Drake brothers were able to do given the proper motivation.

There was no guarantee Sam wouldn't do the same to you if you were on opposite sides. So you decided to not give him the opportunity to even have to consider that decision.

Though you had to admit...you worried about him. Thought about him more in that first month than you wanted to, wondered if it was going to be him that won in the end.

You quit Anton Antiquities, feeling a bit more comforted in your decision when you saw how they were scrambling.

The once-pristine office was falling into disrepair, papers scattered everywhere and everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to find this thing.

It had turned out the man in your hotel room had been one of Marie's newest hires, sent to find the treasure, and you had felt a knot of guilt that you were somewhat involved in his injuries.

He was officially retired now, back at home with his wife and kids, and you made sure to send them some flowers.

You felt a little better walking away from all that now, easily able to picture yourself left to either being an overworked employee or a critically injured retiree if you had stayed.

You had been lucky that Marie's payments were a decent amount, able to live off of it for a few months until your arm was healed and you could settle somewhere.

That somewhere turned out to be Edinburgh, Scotland. Working again as a research assistant for some professor, this time an older woman named Francesca Stewart who's main interests appeared to lie in archival research and expensive dinners.

Though you weren't invited to the latter, and that suited you just fine.

It wasn't some exciting existence, but you were genuinely content. Your boss was kind, you knew how to do the job, and best of all, it wasn't life-threatening in the slightest.

You had not realized you had let Sam go until someone asked you about a rumour that you had helped Clarke for a time try to claim some treasure scattered around Europe.

You didn't really miss him, and with time you slowly realized anything between you wouldn't have lasted anyway.

You had come to expect too much from a man that would never give you what you wanted from him, both times.

You had not just rushed into both relationships, you had sprinted, at first to fulfill some desire from two years ago and the second time to desperately try to move on from the first.

Which is why you decided to take a break from all that. You'd gone 25 years before now with no one by your side, what difference would it make now?

So the months passed by with you on your own, and by the fifth month you felt like you were honestly in a good place.

Which was precisely when one Victor Sullivan arrived.

As it turned out, your boss had known him in her younger years (and from the look in her eyes it had been quite an intimate knowledge) and he had come to her for some clue.