I Was Scared

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. 

Okay, maybe twenty-four years is a bit of an exaggeration, but still. A lot can change in a near ten years, but not the outside of Marco’s apartment.

Bella doesn’t know why she would think it would be different, I mean, her apartment isn’t any different but...maybe the red brown brick and black metal reminds her too much of when things were different.

When her and Marco were different.

“C’mon you have a plan.” Bella mutters to herself, gripping the rail as she walks up the front steps to Marco’s door. “Just be...normal. Yes, yes everything is...normal.”

She trails off as her reflection stares back at her from the window pane, all trembling limbs and wind swept clothing.

Bella hurriedly re-tucks her scarf into her coat, brushes hair away from her face, and sucks in a breath, standing the tallest that she possibly can.  

Her heels and formal attire makes it so much easier. When she looks put together, Bella can pretend that she truly is put together. 

That she’s just visiting Marco on her way home from the bakery, ready to drop off his favourite tarts. Then they can both go inside and eat the sweets while watching movies and catching up. They can spend the whole night on that couch, talking and laughing and eating, and being too busy kissing to pay attention to what’s happening in the film.

But that dream will disappear the moment she knocks her gloved fist on the door. 

Because this isn’t ten years ago, when everything was perfect. This is now, when her career is on the line, and she needs Marco’s help.

She knocks. 

Then knocks again.

And again.

Her confidence is slipping, and not even her best outfit can hold it in place. 

“Please.” She raps her fist against the wood one more time. “Please, Marco.”

Almost as if he’s heard, the door opens, just a crack.

But that sliver of an opening is enough for Bella to see the familiar face, the sharp eyes, and even sharper way his mouth twists into a frown.

“Marco--Hey!” Bella throws her foot in front of the crack of the door so it can’t fully close. “What are you doing?”

“Move your foot Bella.” He snaps, trying to close the door, and putting more pressure onto her already throbbing foot.

“No.” Bella retorts. “I need to talk to you.” She presses her lips into a line, forcing herself to meet Marco’s flat glare. “Please. It’s--it’s important.”

“Ask someone else.” 

“There’s no one else I can ask. Please, let me explain. You’re the only one who can help me.” 

Bella watches as Marco’s eyes flash from anger, to worry, then back to anger.

“You wouldn’t just be helping me,” Bella says quickly, removing her sore foot. She knows Marco well enough that if she doesn’t say something else, they’ll just be caught in a glaring match. “You would be helping the city too, and everyone in it.” She swallows. “I can explain more, and I promise I will. Please.”

Marco regards her for a moment, his icy eyes scanning Bella, looking for something that she can’t quite explain.

“Fine.” Marco says after a moment. “Wait here.”

He slams the door in her face.

It’s an odd thing for Bella to do, but she smiles. 

So much has changed between them, all of it her fault, but at least Marco seems to have kept his usual pessimistic and grouchy attitude.   

Although it hurts for that bad attitude to now be aimed at her.

She waits, shivering against the frosty Brooklyn breeze. So much for trying to look presentable; her scarf and hair has been ruined once again.

Not that Marco will particularly care. 

“He doesn’t.” She reminds herself, eying the door. “He doesn’t care anymore, so neither should you.” She huddles deeper into her coat, wishing, more so than ever, that it wasn’t true.

But it is. She made her choice, and Marco made his. It’s not fair for her to hold it against him, when she hadn’t really left him with much of a choice in the first place.

The door creaks open, and Marco is striding past her before Bella has hardly lifted her eyes.

“Hey!” She scrambles down the steps after him, trying to match his pace. “Where are we going? I said we needed to talk.”

“We will.” He keeps his eyes on the sidewalk ahead. “The soup shop is only another block away, and I know how you love soup. Or did you change your mind about that too?” His voice is hard, and Bella swears he’s started speed walking.

“No.” She swallows, practically running after him. “No, I didn’t change my mind about that.”

“I’m surprised then. I thought you had changed in every way.”

“Maybe not in all of them.” Bella says quietly. 

Quietly enough that Marco probably doesn’t hear, the wind carrying her words away before they’ve reached his ears.

****

“So.” Marco says when they’ve both sat down, soups in hand. They’re the same ones that they always order, and Bella finds herself wondering if he’s noticed.

Noticed that maybe her one choice didn’t separate him from her completely, how he thinks it did.

“Bella?” Marco snaps.

“Mhm?”

“What you needed to talk to me about?” Marco prompts.

She clears her throat, ready to lay down the whole speech she had practiced on the drive over to Marco’s apartment.    

“It’s about my job. And yours.” She feels awkward asking it, even though she had made sure that it’s still true. She asks it anyways, “You’re still a criminal investigator aren’t you? With The Durham Agency?”

“Yes. And you’re still...what? Detectiving with Coreman Industries?” He regards her over the rim of his bowl.

“I am. And I need your help with a case.” She rushes the words out, completely forgetting her perfectly crafted speech. “There’s this guy who the Davidson’s hired me to look into, and he’s been doing some sketchy stuff, stuff that’s kind of out of my league.” She hesitates, willing herself to continue holding Marco’s unreadable gaze. “But I know that it’s in yours. I need your help catching him.”

When Marco doesn’t say anything Bella pushes on, pulling documents out of her purse, and sliding them towards Marco across the table. “He owns this place, so he’s going to be here.” She taps an address at the bottom of the page. “But I--I don’t deal with the kind of stuff this guy does. Look through the other documents and you’ll see what I’m talking about.” She sucks in a breath, preparing for her final line. “And I--I didn’t want to go alone. I know that you’re in the area, that you deal with this kind of stuff better than me and my people, so…”

Bella watches Marco for some kind of reaction.

He doesn’t give her one.

“Um, never mind.” She sighs, dropping his gaze. “Never mind all of this stuff. I’ll--I’ll call someone else. It was stupid for me to ask you anyways after...everything. Forget I said anything, just, just forget all of it alright? God, I’m not even supposed to be talking about this with anyone, what am I doing?”

Bella reaches across the table for the papers, kicking herself for saying so much already. She was supposed to wait for Marco to agree to this first, before she gave him all the details. Now he could compromise the job…

It’s only that when she talks to Marco she can’t hold back on anything. It’s all her words or none of them, all her love or none of it.

She somehow always manages to choose the former.

“Wait.” Marco reaches for her hand, the warmth of his own seeping through her gloves. “I’ll help you. I’ll go with you.”

She’s so shocked that he’s actually holding her hand. That he’s still holding her fingers in his own, that she forgets--only for a moment--that he agreed to help her.

All she can see is her blue gloved fingers surrounded by the warmth of Marco. 

Then Marco’s hand is gone too fast, and Bella sits in her chair blinking, as if she’s been told some impossible fact.

It feels very much like an impossible fact, for Bella didn’t think Marco would agree to help, much less that he would be willing to touch her again. She thought that she had burned that bridge long ago.

Perhaps…

“I’ll meet you at the address.” Bella says, hoping her recovery didn’t take too long. “Outside the doors by the lamppost. There’s a lamppost out front. And it kind of flickers; someone has to change its lightbulb. Anyway,” Bella realizes she’s rambling. “I’ll--I’ll see you there?”

“You will.” 

Bella's sure she’s imagining it, but his voice is lighter, a touch softer from the cruel harshness that it was less than an hour ago.

“Thank you.” Bella says. “Really. You--I didn’t expect you to say yes. But I’m glad you did.” 

“You’re uh, welcome.” Marco replies. “Can I keep these? To look through?” He gestures towards the papers she had practically thrown at him.

“Of course. I won’t need them back. I’ve memorized most of the details anyways, they’re all yours.”

They sit in an awkward silence for a few moments, neither of them able to think of the right words to say. Not that there’s very many when you’ve been put in a situation like theirs. 

“So.” Bella starts. “I’ll see you tonight? I mean we can go anytime, whatever--whichever day of the week works for you…”

“Tonight is good.” 

“Good.”

Bella manages a wobbly smile, stands, then practically runs out of the soup shop.

Had she stayed, she would have seen Marco’s torn expression between staying and going after her. But why would he go after her when he’ll see her tonight?

“No.” He tells himself. “It’s better this way.”

Marco waits five minutes before he leaves the soup shop, slowly walking back to his apartment. 

He resolves not to think of Bella and what they had long long ago.  

****

Four hours later and Bella is standing under the lamp. The one that’s flickering, casting strange shadows across the pavement and the figure heading towards her.

Marco.

She really didn’t think he would come.

Even now it’s hard to see that it’s him, the light travelling in bursts across his face and chest, mocking how Bella’s fingers once used to do the same thing.  

“Thank you for coming.” Bella nods at the doors. “Are you ready?”

“I’m here aren’t I?” Marco follows Bella’s gaze to the peeling wood surrounding the antiquity shop’s front doors.

They look like they haven’t been opened in ages, much less for someone to be going in and out of them.

Bella and Marco start towards the doors, ignoring the sign out front that says the place closes at 9:00PM, less than five minutes from now. But if it closes soon, then hopefully there’s no one in there.

Not that Bella knows many people who would even be interested in going into an antique shop, much less one that looks like the owner is part of some cult.

News flash, he is.

“This place is so creepy.” Bella mutters once the door closes behind them. 

She almost wishes Marco would have left it propped open with something, because not only is there little light, but the light that there is is making the grandfather clocks and figurines look dark and sinister.

It’s probably better though that there hardly is any light, for if there had been, seeing the place in all its eerie glory would have been enough to turn the both of them around.

“Do you think he’s already--”

A creak and a faint humming, and Bella knows Marco has the answer to his question.

It’s always been hard to tell with Marco and his usually perfectly neutral face, but there’s no light required to be able to see a trace of alarm in Marco’s gaze as he meets Bella’s.

“I know what you’re going to say.” Bella holds up her hands. “And no, we can’t come back later. We have to stop him now!”

“It’s not safe.” Marco whisper shouts. “I read all of those papers you gave me! What if he tries to cut us up in some sacrificial ceremony or whatever he did to the Davidson’s nephew!” 

“Do you have the police--”

“They’re already on speed dial.”

“Then we’ll be fine.” Bella advances further into the shop, fighting her shiver as she does. “We just have to get the person to come down here to make sure that he’s our guy, and it’ll be fine.”

“It’s a miracle you haven’t gotten yourself killed yet.” Marco snaps.

Bella stops. Turns to face him.

“This is part of my job, and it’s part of yours Marco.” She says, staring him down. “Everything is going to be fine.”

“No it’s not!” Marco nearly shouts. “It’s not going to be fine and it’s never going to be fine again!” He draws a breath, running his hand through his hair as he does “You running off to do this isn’t the problem. You know I’ve always been cool with what you do. Proud of you even.”

Some of the fire burning in Bella’s throat cools. 

“It’s just that you’re…” He sighs. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.”

“Yes it does.” Bella steps closer towards Marco, all concern and obligation about the threat upstairs disappearing. “Marco I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I did. I--” She looks away from him, unable to stand the question in his eyes. “I regret it every single day.”

“But why? Why did you do it?” His voice is soft and broken, the only thing that matters at the moment. This question, and Marco, beautifully perfect Marco, and how she hurt him. How she was scared.

Suddenly the memories of the ring, Marco on his knee, the hope and happiness in his eyes, sink in and Bella has to step away. The pain of that single step is enough to tear her heart out.

“Because I was scared.” She murmurs. “I was scared of what marriage meant, and I was scared of the future, and I was scared,” Bella chokes on a sob. “Of how much I love you.”

“That’s cute.”

The voice doesn’t belong to Marco. But he instinctively turns to step in front of her, a shield against Bella and her target.

“Viktor Cran.” Bella glances at Marco’s phone and the open line between them and the police. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The man, short and thin, barely up to Bella’s shoulder, frowns and looks down at her. She doesn’t know how he manages such a thing.

“We’re closed.”

“Not for questions.” Marco reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out his badge. “Have a seat; this is going to be a while.” 

Questioning Cran takes shorter than Bella would have expected, and certainly shorter than she’s used to, but the man cracked after hardly five minutes of Bella and Marco pressing him for information. 

He eventually gave them all of it, begrudgingly confessing to the Davidson’s nephew’s murder, as well as several others. A more thorough investigation will have to be done of the crime scene and of his associates, but for now Bella is perfectly content to watch him get loaded into the back of a police car, and watch Marco close the door.

Then he turns to face her, the blue and red lights fading into the blur of colours that make up a regular Wednesday night in Brooklyn.

Well, maybe not perfectly content.  

“Thank you again Marco.” Bella says, once they’ve stepped closer to each other, standing at the corner of the street. “You didn’t have to do this, but you did. I’m grateful.”

“Yeah well.” He casts around the street, but it seems they have this little corner to themselves. “It is my job.”

Bella smiles, searching for something to say other than another mindless thank you, or an awkward question.

Marco beats her to it.

“Did you mean it?” His voice is the same soft one he used to use on her. The same one he always used to use with her. “About how you only said no because you were scared?”

“Yes,” She says, making sure she holds Marco’s gaze when she says it. “Every word.”

He nods, swallowing. “I see. And are you...still scared? Even now?”

“There’s no reason for me to be.” She says, more to herself than to him. “You may be a tall, dark, criminal investigator, but you’re not a scary one.”

Marco smiles, a spark of humor that Bella had forgotten how much she missed, flickering in his dark eyes. “I’m glad you think so.”

The silence between them stretches, both of them scared to say something wrong, lest the other walk away.

“Well. Goodnight.” Marco says after the tense silence is too much. “I’ll uh...see you around? Soup again together sometime, maybe?”

Bella can’t help but smile at the small proposal. Because a small one is better than nothing.

So she nods, agrees, then watches Marco turn around and start down the street, back to his apartment. She watches his figure until it blends into the crowd that’s heading her way, but even then she swears she sees Marco turn back around. 

And perhaps it’s her imagination but she swears that it’s him. And he’s smiling. The bright golden smile that he always had for her, only her.

Maybe they’ll find each other again. Or maybe they won’t. But Marco was here, she had seen him, at least in part, and that was all that mattered.