Early Morning

     "It's a lovely shade of pink, isn't it? They just came in."

He smiled faintly at the florist, who was framed by buckets of flowers that spilled out onto the cobbled square of Covent Garden. The cold day was young yet and Haroun had come walking rather than apparition - it was his habit to stop by the shops to pick up what he might need for lunch.

"A dozen, if you would please?" The wizard counted out muggle notes in his delicate fashion. "Only a little arrangement."

As he waited, his eyes shifted to a point past the florist: the warped, reflective surface of a metallic vase. Haroun did not linger on this. That would be a tell.

When he first felt like he was being watched, in the past week or so, he thought his past had finally caught up. Somebody from the Diwan[1] bringing their grudge to fruition. But when he caught a glimpse of his tail, Haroun knew his past had caught up in an entirely different way. He would recognise those eyes anywhere.


The tailor let himself into Stardust through a side entrance, leaving the door unlocked behind him. Because he was sometimes a coward he had not confronted her - but today, perhaps it was instinct, he felt differently.

It was quiet in the theatre, as it often was in the morning. Haroun made his way through the back passages and unlocked the door to his workroom, next to the costume hall.

Leisurely, he removed his shoes and approached his tiny worktable. It was a large room made smaller by racks of costumes and a floor-to-ceiling shelf carrying bolts of colourful cloth. Haroun tapped a copper kettle before seeing to the shopping, his back to the door.

"Your mother wore her hair like that when we met," he spoke evenly as he set down a box of pastries. "She thought it was very chic but it would get in her eyes. I hope you still like bakewell tarts."

1.	Magical government of

How much anger could one reasonable hold in the flesh?

What was the cost of a blinding rage?

Hunter was aware of the mistakes she was making as she followed her mark through Muggle London the past week. She'd settled into her work as a Personal Security Wix for the restaurateur, Salvador Falcon,  before venturing into London to find him.

Him.

Haroun Ismaeli, infamous revolutionary that ran and hid with his tail between his legs. Haroun Ismaeli, the man who promised to be her father. Who gave her up as soon as he could. The one who sharpened her edge, and showed her what she needed to become the deadly weapon she became. Her father's admission and intel over the years gave her enough information to know how he was involved in her mothers death.

Emotions that she divorced from her being prickled back, breaching the surface. She was 7 1/2 again, confused and scared in a country she could barely remember. Hearing a language that sounded familiar, yet foreign in her young ears.

He told her he loved her, would come back for her, but he lied!

Her gloved hand went for the entrance handle of the Stardust and it slid open.  Her tennis shoes nudged the door open further and she slid in, locking the door behind her.

Laser focused, the predator stalked quietly behind him, a silencing charm allowing her to move without making a noise. It didn't matter that he knew she was there, her movements were rote and practiced. She found places to hide behind as she got nearer, and nearer....her wand out.

"I came to kill you." She answered back, her voice cold and detached. She revealed herself, clutching her wand in her left hand. "I hate you." She face felt warm to the touch, she could feel a few loose hot tears fall. Unlike herself, her dominate hand trembled and she didn't think she could do it.

She was 10 again, writing frantically to her father about the minor role she got in Little Red Riding Hood. Letters she received back from him kept her motivated to keep acting. The ornate costumes in his office reminding her of all her tailored outfits.

"I hate you." She repeated, pushing her wand forward. It didn't do anything.

He was lifting the kettle when she spoke, and there was only the slightest pause before he poured boiling water into a ready teapot. All of his tea things were old and mismatched - weathered fine china, patterns almost washed out, and a silver strainer denter in parts.

"I see..." Haroun set the lid down on the pot and finally turned, so that he was fully facing a figure only half-seen these last few days.

Beautiful creature, she was. Not as Olivia had been, Olivia who was so deeply human and earnest that her death seemed inevitable some days, when the light was blue or the sky heavy. Hunter was beautiful like a tempest.

"Will you sit? Before you kill me," he gestured at the table, apologetically. "Early, I know, for tea. We can pretend it does not matter."

Haroun felt that she probably would not kill him - he had good instincts about that type of thing - but he also did not mind if she did. Like a tempest, Hunter was also unpreventable.

If he had to die here, surrounded by his work and at her hand, it would not be unworthy. "Please?" he sat with the faintest of smiles. "Hunter."

She wiped away the few tears that fell while his back was to her, while Haroun gathered and set out the mismatched fine china on a table in front of them. "Why are you rolling over and showing your belly to me." She snarled back at his invitation.

She'd imagined this moment, dreamt of hurting him for so long. Hunter couldn't imagine such an unassuming man, would welcome his death by her hands. His lack of fear took out the "oomph" out of the moment and her adrenal system wouldn't pump her with the adrenaline she needed to commit to the murder.

She sat down on the offered chair, and leaned the chair back on the back legs. A name she was just getting used to, in a language that was unfamiliar to her foreign ears. She slid her wand back in her pocket, acknowledging the moment to kill him past a minute ago.

"Do you still pray?" Turkish was an easier language for her to fall back on. She wasn't particularly religious, but there were some cultural habits that were embedded in her DNA from her childhood. A few muggle customs that permeated into the magical sector of their world.

Hunter found most didn't believe in God, but the prayers were beautifully poetic and she learned Arabic to be closer to it's source. Her experience in the UK told her it wasn't important to most of the secular population.

His belly! If he laughed, it was low and rumbly, sitting in his chest.

Haroun placed a folded napkin before her and then himself before setting the bakewell tart out for his daughter. Perhaps he was busy with his hands so that he would not need to be with his mind, or words, but he did not linger on the thought.

"God exists here as much as anywhere else," the wizard replied in the same tongue, pleased to hear in her voice the same particular accent of their upbringing with the Al-iibr. "Don't tell me you are fasting?"

His fair eyes flicked up to meet her own, corners crinkling fondly. "My healer tells me I should not," he continued placidly. "But maybe I will try, for jumaah[1], hm?"

Faith always had its place in Haroun's life, though he did not think of himself as particularly religious. It was a lens through which he could draw away from the day-to-day and find perspective, truth.

1.	Holy day of the week, Friday.

"Mhmm, no." She replied back, "I haven't held holy Friday, though I still try to practice Ramadan." Hunter was much more of a fair-weathered practitioner who took from the religion the elements she found comforting. She didn't believe, but found the practices grounding.

Her eyes narrowed. She felt a bit uneasy at his affection, and didn't return it. Hunter couldn't remember the last time she sat so raw and vulnerable with another person. Setting the legs down on the floor, she scooted the chair up to the table. Her eyes drifted down to the bakewell tart on the plate and she opened the meal in prayer.

"In the name of Allah the entirely merciful, the most merciful. We wouldn't be here without his sustenance." The words that came didn't feel like hers, but the practice of being thankful resonated with her. Her eyes opened and she waited until he took the first bite.

Like she'd often do as a child.

Her bite came second, she savored the sweet buttered treat, after carefully extracting the almonds layered on top. The silence between them didn't feel as awkward as she'd expected and there was a comfortable nostalgia lingering over her. Hunter didn't know what to say to him.

There was so much, yet so little.

He muttered a simple bismillah as he lifted his petit lemon tart, glancing at Hunter with a startled laugh as she read the full Tasmiyyah.

It was a schoolgirl's manner - as was her pointed removal of the almonds, as if the fussy child of their past was still wrapped up underneath this new person. She had taken his teachings so earnestly back then, as only children can.

"They must be very strict at Zappeion." Haroun commented after a stretch of silence, in which he had poured their tea once it was brewed. "I thought you would have forgotten by now."

His upbringing had been typically religious yet far from strict, so he knew that it was not the Al-iibr who had Hunter keep up that habit. But he could easily imagine it of an all-girls madrassa - his own alma mater had Al-Fatihah painted high up on the walls of their dining hall.

"You are in London to stay?" he asked over the rim of his cup. "Or passing through?"

It did not feel right to ask more pressing questions. Where have you been? What is your life now? Are you happy? And so Haroun resorted to courtesy questions first, watching her carefully.

The creature comforts she engaged in to justify her existence. She stopped pushing the fork into her treat and listened to him ask an innocent enough question, "You would know if you were there." Was her curt response to his inquiry. Her eyes traveled up from her bakewell tart to meet his eyes.

"I haven't decided," Her answer was true, she felt foreign in this part of the world and lonely. Part of her felt pleased that she met her objective, and she thought about leaving again. "I can't tell you much more then that." Another truth, her work was generally confidential.

After taking a sip of the brewed tea, she slid the chair back with the almonds sitting on the plate and a half-eaten Bakewell tart. When the tea would cool, she would go back and finish.

Hunter felt a child again in Haroun's presence and old habits that died with her when she left her family, Al-iibr, came back, fresh. So did the pain she thought she buried under dozens of new Hunters.

Her hands swept deftly through his tailored costumes. "You still sew?" She asked simply, curiously. Knowing the answer already, from his own evidence -- the aged callus on his fingers. "Remember my favorite abaya you made for me when we went back to Istanbul." Hunter was fond of the flower-print rimmed, dark-blue outfit as a child, and insisted he made her a bigger size when she outgrew it. She hadn't worn that style of clothing, or a hijab in many moons.

Glancing at the tea, she could still see steam coming off the top, so she went back to looking through the clothes. The distance between herself and her father provided her with some comfort. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could tolerate, but she knew she wouldn't leave before finishing his offered food and tea.

He lowered his gaze, almost as if flinching, at her pointed remark. There was nothing to be said to that - Haroun missed out on so much of her life and she was right.

The nature of her current work remained shrouded in mystery and he drank his tea, eyes on Hunter as she rose to examine the costumes hanging up in his work room. These were pieces he was currently altering or designing for when Edgar's current production finished its run, to be replaced by the sombre work of another playwright.

"Yes," he rubbed his fingers together unconsciously, a tailor's tactile memory. "Chirimen. Japanese, a raw silk crêpe. It wrinkles beautifully. Brought out your eyes."

Haroun remembered working with the material, even remembered the trader with whom he had haggled for it. The floral embroidery on the hem had been difficult.

Hunter was at a rack of Victorian style nightdresses now, shades of cream and ivory against which she still appeared quite pale.

"A cape dress would suit you," he commented without thinking - it was a natural progression, to dream of what he might make for her now. "But not blue, I believe?"

No. Not blue at all. Haroun thought it too cold a colour for her. "A deep red."

Hunter pulled a few of the costumes out, and pushed them back into the racks as she listened to her father recall the tactile materials of her abaya. His words brought the image of her dress alive, and she could feel her body tingle. A warmth filled her chest that stretched out through her arms.

His comment was innocent enough, but the act of tailoring clothes had always been how her father expressed his love.

"No." She whispered, pushing in the ivory Victorian style nightdress. "No." Her voice started trembling as he searched for a color. "NO!" Howling, her face twisted and contorted when he landed on the deep red.

"Y-you." She took a deep breath, "You left me. You left me. You left me." Her fists grabbed onto the top of the rack, shaking it. She took a deeper breath in, searching for words, "Don't act like you love me. Don't!" Hunter snarled, like a feral cat cornered.

"You abandoned me! YOU!" She threw a few of the costumes off their rack in her rage. "I waited for you to come get me." Her voice trembled, "You lied to me! You were never coming back for me. You never loved me so stop acting like you do, now!" She threw more of his costumes on the ground. "I hate these goddamn costumes. I hate you." Her words were like venom, "I HATE YOU." Her words were pointed, she did the unthinkable and swore God's name in vain. Hunter couldn't remember the last time she'd experienced a rage where she lost herself in this way.

"I hurt." She kicked the rack behind the Victorian nightgowns, "SO FUCKING BAD. And you never cared, so don't start now." She couldn't hold back the tears, and Hunter cried. Her face burned, her body ached for comfort but she was so used to being alone. So alone.

She finally looked back at Haroun, and then the thrashed costumes around her. "This is nothing compared to what you did to me."

The anger he had been expecting came loose of its binding and Haroun did not attempt to stifle or interrupt it - like watching a child throw a tantrum, knowing that to plead against it was pointless, he remained seated and composed on the surface. Her words stabbed as only the truth can.

Only when she began to thrash the costumes did he turn on his stool, leaning forward with elbows on his knees to cast a look of distress across the floor.

        "This is nothing compared to what you did to me."

He tore his gaze away from the sullied dresses, eyes settling in concern on Hunter's fury and tears. Had he really done this? Inflicted on her all this pain?

"I'm sorry, Hunter." Haroun sighed as he sat straight, rubbed the hair at the back of his head. "I... I don't know what to tell you. At that time in my life, I believed, maybe wrongly, that it was better you be raised by people who knew how to raise children."

His own family, it had seemed more gift than abandonment. He could still remember the relief of coming to that decision, of Hunter growing up as he did instead of in uncertainty.

"I don't know where you have been all these years..." he looked at her earnestly, though placid. "Possibly, I do not have a right to know. Alhamdullilah, I am grateful to see you alive and spirited. Even if you don't believe it of me."

There was nothing in him that could resent Hunter for her anger or outburst. "Here." Haroun tugged out a handkerchief from his vest pocket to offer. "Did I not say, to always keep one on you?"

His voice was so low, and timber so even that Hunter had to strain to hear him. She stopped crying to listen, though she didn't believe anything he said. How could she? He was obviously lying.

Haroun came close, breached her personal bubble and she grabbed at his handkerchief to blow her nose. Tears, and snot, her orifices were flooding with things that she was unfamiliar with. The last time she cried like this, she thought she may have still been a teenager.

The memory came alive. Haroun visited during every summer holiday and stayed as long as he could afford it. She'd realized at 17 he was a broke tailor in the United Kingdom, but he made the effort to come see her! She told him then, in a similar fashion, that she hated him! Although she remembered it was for what he couldn't afford to buy her. New sandals, an expensive designer outfit. It didn't matter that he could weave fabric into something better.

Her memories felt alive, and she remembered what it felt like to be loved. Hunter shunted them back where they belonged. Behind lock and key, padlocked and thrown in the ocean. Her memory was failing her, there was no way she wasn't fabricating falsehoods to feel better about the wall she built around herself.

Standing up from the clothes, she handed him back the dirty handkerchief and sat back at the table. Hunter was 11 again, eating her favorite tart. The sun shown over the pair and her dad laughed at the stupid joke she told. "I still hate you," Her face hurt to the touch, "Really, really hate you." Taking the fork, she stabbed a piece of the Bakewell and ate the tart. "I'm not loveable." She whispered to herself.

Hunter was going to finish her tart, drink her tea and sniffle. She made that promise to herself.

They resumed their places, now surrounded by the wake of her anger rather than his own orderly manner. He carefully placed the handkerchief in the wash basket under the table and tapped the teapot so as to reheat its contents.

His life has been so different in those days - the uncertainty of it all, his dependency on Edgar's career and the fickle tastes of Soho audiences. Now he had stability and safety and just enough affluence to feel comfortable, privileged. If he had all this back then...

"You reserve every right to hate me." Haroun smiled softly at his sullen daughter, as he picked at a lemon tart. "But you must allow me to insist you are lovable, Hunter. If only because I love you and I know you are loved by others."

He sighed, leaning in though still maintaining a respectful distance. "Your teyze and amca[1], they worried, you must know? They still worry."

Though not literal aunt or uncle, Haroun's older cousins had served as Hunter's official guardians within the Al-iibir. It had been difficult for them.

"Let me write, that they might know you are safe?" Haroun raised his eyebrows, imploring gently.

1.	Auntie and Uncle in Turkish

This whole situation was so fucked. She couldn't go through with killing her father, and staying in London for any amount of time wasn't part of her plan. Initially, she was going to stay until he was dead and leave Wolf & Lamb behind. Now. Well, she was sitting in front of him and he opened her Pandora's box.

All the hazing, all the mental and physical abuse that she endured to become a sharpened knife, and all it took was her father's compassion to erode the wall she'd so carefully built. The ramifications of a careless past, of experiencing an unadulterated and pure parent's love!

However, her direct involvement in the careless acts of war had showed her the true nature of people, humans were selfish, they were cruel. They hurt others if they showed weakness.

If she stayed too long, listened too long she was afraid that she'd start caring. The ice around her heart had long begun breaking the fibers of her heart, and she was only the nasty woman who never cared. So why did this hurt so much. Why?

"NO." Couldn't he see that he was hurting her? Couldn't he see that his empathy for her was breaking her from the inside. "Stop pretending you care..." He didn't know she choose to kill, she choose to take away other peoples loved ones. He didn't know that she'd been fucking the cook at Wolf & Lamb, intending on brewing polyjuice potion to frame him if she needed to kill again. No one gave a shit about Nate Briggs. She knew about his criminal history, that he was banned from casting his own magic. Easy.

Now she felt a tinge of remorse for using him. She'd disassociated herself so clearly from her humanity that she could act. She wasn't sure she wanted to now. Her eyes welled again, why did it hurt. Why was she wanting connection. Why couldn't she just drink it away. Sex it away. Why did it hurt so much to realize herself as a human.

Was she a monster? Her body shrunk into itself and she moved the Bakewell tart. "I..." The words stopped. She didn't deserve his compassion.

It ached to see that something was eating away at Hunter. Even if she hadn't been his daughter, even if she was a total stranger - closer to their current reality - Haroun would have recognised some inner turmoil taking place.

She vacillated between calm and fury, like a teenager.

"Hunter..." the wizard sighed as he watched her searchingly. "You don't have to believe me but I do care for you. I wish to do right by you now," he added in a level tone, "and this extends to letting teyze and amca know you are with me."

A thought occurred to him then, that maybe she objected to this on a more practical level. "Unless you believe that knowledge of your whereabouts would endanger them?" Haroun tilted his head to the side, curious.