Episode 43

It wasn't until Scarlet woke up that she realized she'd fallen asleep. Hearing Helfeirch and Flinch talking in the other room, she remembered that she was in the present.

"… So Helfeirch is kind of an odd name," Flinch remarked.

"So is Flinch. Your parents must have had a sense of humor," Helfeirch said in response.

Flinch chuckled. "Not really. But they're not the ones who gave me that name."

"Then who did?"

"I did," Scarlet answered as she entered the room.

Helfeirch, who hadn't seemed all that interested in his conversation with Flinch, turned to look at Scarlet with a cocked brow. "Is that so?"

Scarlet nodded.

"Yeah, we were both needing a fresh start. So, we started by picking out new names for one another." Flinch explained. "I picked Scarlet for her…"

"Because of my red hair," Scarlet interjected.

"And she chose Flinch for me," He continued as he shook his head. "So cruel."

"What are you shaking your head for? It suited you," Scarlet smirked.

Helfeirch had quietly watched the interaction between the two. "Why did you need a fresh start?" he then asked.

Scarlet took in a deep breath. "I had shot some people, and one of them happened to be distantly connected to one of the heavy-hitting organizations in that part of Lygredd Grand. I didn't want to end up with a bullet in both hands and in one of my legs. So, I disappeared and started with a clean slate. Flinch had been present for the whole affair. Plus, he could help me get a new identity. So, we helped each other get out of there and start anew."

"I see," Helfeirch said as Scarlet took a seat next to him.

"Yup, and we've been business partners ever since."

---

Flinch's expression turned slightly sad as he listened to her words. He couldn't remember one time when she'd taken credit for saving his life that day. And it was that day, while he sat on the floor next to her while she slept off the shock, that some part of him had fallen in love with her. However, it hadn't been til much later that he realized it.

The last time he'd seen her before she had disappeared, she had come by to get some supplies and crashed out on his bed for a nap like she so often did. By then, he was well aware of his feelings for her. So, when he'd walked back to check on her and found her still sleeping there, he couldn't help stopping to watch her. And before he realized what he was doing, he was sitting on the bed, leaning over with his lips gently pressed to hers.

She then shifted beneath him, causing him to come to his senses, and he withdrew from her wide-eyed and fearful he'd awoken her. He couldn't decide if he was relieved or disappointed when she had rolled over and continued to sleep. He dared to brush her hair from her face as he'd done that day and swore in his heart that, once she was done with her job, he would find the courage to tell her how he felt. But he never got the chance to fulfill this oath to himself.

Something inside himself broke the day he'd gotten the news of Scarlet's death, and the only thing that managed to hold him together was the hope that she was somehow alive. There was some part of him that had always fundamentally rejected her death. But as the days turned into years, he couldn't fight the other part of himself that said that he needed to accept he'd never see her again.

He'd felt himself going more and more numb. And just when he was about ready to accept it, there she was, knocking on his door. She looked different than before, but she sounded the same, and her expressions were the same. At first, he thought that she must be some figment of his imagination or that he had finally lost his mind.

His shock at seeing her alive combined with his fear to believe his eyes had left him hardly able to speak. And seeing that she had a strange male companion that he'd never met before with her, further stifled the words he'd desperately wanted to say all these years.

Flinch had not failed to miss the way Helfeirch looked at Scarlet. And what was worse was how much she seemed to trust him. It made the blond-headed man wonder if even after she'd come back from the dead, he'd still not have a chance.

Was that stolen kiss while she slept the first and last he'd ever get? His heart ached at thinking that it might be.

Flinch's eyes settled on the man who now sat next to Scarlet. He was not like other men who'd tried to get close to Scarlet in the past. He'd seen it the first time he'd met Helfeirch, and he'd seen it again today. It was something about his eyes.

There were plenty of killers in this world. He knew this because he'd seen them, met them. But looking at Helfeirch made him feel like, for the first time, he was in the presence of a natural-born predator.