STRANGER, jesper fahey

CHAPTER SIX

"You're drunk, Jesper."

The taste of alcohol had never really settled well in Gwen's stomach, she'd always found it to be too sharp on her tastebuds, found the smell too strong, and found that its effects could leave her nothing short of inhibited which in her profession, was never really good. However, that being said, hanging around with the likes of Jesper for the past month and a half had left her drinking far more than the occasional whiskey before bed that would settle her nerves, because now she was forcing down the shots like a pro...usually in an effort to block out his drunken ramblings but the effort was there all the same.

That wasn't to say that Jesper was a drunk, no, although she somewhat wished he was because perhaps then she'd be having a easier time at prying some information out of him that wasn't completely useless and that didn't leave her wanting to tear her hair out. He just seemed to like frequenting the bars for...well, that she hadn't truthfully found out yet, though she was getting curious enough to ask, but she was assuming that the sharpshooter was far more lonely than he let on, because that would explain his constant want of her company, and his escapades in gambling and bar-hopping.

In another life, Gwen thought that she would of quite liked him, would of liked his zest for life, his confidence, his smile that made the gloom of Ketterdam nothing more than an after thought. She would of thought that his skills with his pistol were impressive and his stories incredible, and maybe she would of done more than liked him.

But in that life, she would of still had her brothers, Jordie would probably be some big time merchant, Kaz would be a university and she would...well, she supposed that was the tragedy, she'd never had time to think of what she'd wanted to be until the world told her what she had to be. A monster, an assassin, all of those things and far, far worse.

But yes, she really did think that she could of liked Jesper, and perhaps that was why she was always quick to accept his offers of dates, or what she'd known as surprising ideas thrown at her when they'd bump into each other as they walked the Barell's crooked cobblestones...and she was starting to suspect that some of them weren't mere happenings, because while she knew that she, sometimes, most of the time really, arranged such fated meetings with precise stalking...it was beginning to look like he was doing the exact same through less extreme methods.

She'd actually watched him one day, hiding in the shadows with her eyes narrowed in concentration, curious on how they'd always seemed to inevitably fall together even without her meddling...and found Jesper constantly pacing around the Stalls that she occasionally frequented through out various point in the day, always looking but never buying or stealing as he glanced around anxiously, waiting fot something...or someone while trying to look inconspicuous as possible, unknowingly causing Gwen to laugh in the quiet of her isolation before she'd eventually put him out of his misery to pretend to be suprised to see him.

And of course, that lead to where she was currently, sitting on a very uncomfortable chair and watching as he drank himself into oblivion.

There was something that almost felt like worry winding deep in the pit of her gut the more she watched him as the night went on, dark eyes tracing over the base of his neck, his long fingers curled over shot glass after shot glass, his pretty eyelashes forming shadows across his cheeks in the warm glow of the club. Leaning her head against her palm and staring at him with a quirked brow as he drank more and more until she was pretty sure that there was no longer blood pumping through his veins and instead it was whatever form of alcohol he had decided to consume.