Chapter Text
Tim Bradford was not having a good day.
His co-workers might argue that he rarely had one of those, but today was an exceptionally bad one, even by his standards. It was one of the hottest days of L.A, he hadn’t had a wink of sleep in the past 22 hours and on top of it all, his rookie was an utter and absolute moron.
“Boot.” he barked for what might have been the twentieth time in the past hour.
The boot in question, Aaron Thorsen jerked awake banging his head on the window of their shop.
“How many times have I told you that the only way to survive the night shift is naps?” He continued to snap at him, “No shorter tha-”
“-20 minutes, no longer than 40 minutes, I know, sir.” Aaron finished only to shrink under his glare. “I had some stuff going on.”
“I don’t care what stuff you’ve had going on, boot. Nothing’s more important than the job.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry is just an excuse for people wh-”
He was cut off by Aaron suddenly jerking upwards, his eyes wide and alert as he pointed at something in front of them. “What was that?”
“What was what, boot?” Tim asked, annoyed by the interruption during his lecture, but yet looked up where his rookie’s attention had snapped.
“There,” Aaron pointed, “behind the building. It was like a shadow.”
“It was probably just the streetlight flickering.”
Aaron still looked unconvinced, his unsure eyes darting between him and the corner of the building where the shadow had disappeared to.
“Boot, I swear if you make me get out of the shop for a hallucination.” Tim sighed but still moved to get out followed by the younger officer, the sounds of both their doors slamming cutting through the silence of the night.
“Control, show us code 6 near Sunset Plaza.” He heard his rookie behind him, muttering lowly into the radio followed by the radio crackling in response.
They turned around the corner of the posh neighbourhood, the only noise to be heard during the full moon night being their hushed footsteps and the whistling hot summer wind. Somewhere, a faint dripping of a pipe was audible.
“There’s nothing he-” Tim started only to be interrupted the umpteenth time that evening as a loud crash echoed through the tall and imposing building in front of them.
Shit.
Tim immediately took off in the direction of the building, adrenaline slowly budding up through his chest.
“Shit,” his boot echoed his thoughts, “that’s the Los Angeles Museum of Historical Artifacts. Some of the lost paintings of Mughal dynasty were displayed in an exhibition during a charity gala this evening.”
“The what?”
“The Mughal dynasty paintings. Most of them are already kept in museums around the world. This is a recently unearthed batch.”
“Is it worthy enough for someone to steal it?” Tim asked, knowing well enough the lengths people could over overpriced stuff that that no value besides popularity. He could feel Aaron’s disbelieving look on him.
“Sir, it’s an exclusive collection from some of the best painters of that time. Someone could earn billions auctioning them off.”
Tim didn’t respond, only quickening his footsteps to reach the gated building. In the cabin besides the gate, the security guard lay on the floor, unmoving, as Tim bent over him to check his pulse.
“Is he dead?” Aaron asked from behind him, his voice quivering a little.
“No, he’s just unconscious.” He reassured the younger man. “We need to go in. Whoever’s done this must still be inside. Call backup and an R.A. for the victim and stay here in case the suspect tries to flee.”
Tim rushed inside the building, not waiting for a response as he quickly crossed over to the main entrance of the museum. The museum was as still as the night, eerily silent, showing no signs of a disturbance, yet alone a theft. Unholstering his service weapon, he quickly cleared out the ground floor and took the staircase leading to the first floor of the three-story building, his footsteps quiet as he moved stealthily trying to catch any suspects with surprise.
As he took the stairs to the topmost building of the floor, he heard a loud crash again, this time nearer. He quickly went through the stairs, two at a time, his heart beating a mile a minute. He ducked through the emergency gate into the museum’s main hall again.
“-have to ruin everything, you jealous bitch.”
Tim stopped, straining to hear the faint conversation between the suspects trying to gain a visual while still hiding behind a support pillar.
“-okay? You don’t have to keep doing this. There are other ways.”
He paused, as the second voice reached his ears.
God, the voice was prett- No.
This was a potential criminal.
“If you choose to step away, I promise you’ll be under my protectio-” The second voice continued, interrupted by a grunt and a thump of bodies hitting the floor in what Tim was sure was a fight.
He quickly snapped out of his thoughts and got up from his crouched position, his focus back on taking down the suspects. In his haste, he didn’t notice the shattered glass on the floor as his foot hit the marble floor with a crunch. Immediately, the sounds stopped and Tim figured his guise was over. He ran over to them his gun raised only to be tackled into the floor by a bounding force.
He forced himself to get up and the force who he could now see as a young blonde girl wearing a green tactical vest and skin tight pants ran past him.
“Hey,” he shouted, getting up as fast as he could, “Stop.”
But the girl had already disappeared into the exit he’d just come out of. Just as he started to chase after the girl, a gut feeling in him pushed him to pause and turn back around just to see a black shadow disappear into the balcony gates of the museum. He abandoned his initial path, taking after the cloaked figure.
The balcony opened through the multiple gates through the walls of the room looking over the Hollywood hills. He shouldered his way past one of them, and instantly ran into his target. The figure in black stumbled back a little, as she collided with his chest and attempted to slip past him.
But Tim was faster this time.
Tim tightly gripped her arm in his hand, his fingers easily touching each other around it as the woman, dressed in a black coat with her hair pulled into a side braid was pulled into him by the force of his grip, her chest crashing against his, theirs breaths heavy and hearts pounding.
“Yo-”
Tim suddenly forgot his train of thought as the woman in black lifted her head just as the electricity across the city cut and the world darkened, their faces only to be lightened by the full moon behind them. For the first time since the evening, their eyes met. Blue and hazel. And at that moment two worlds, which had been blissfully unaware of each other, quite literally collided. The man and the woman, the law and the justice, fighting the same war on opposite sides of the battle stared at each other, only the full moon witnessing their union, lightening their faces for each other. Somewhere, fate chuckled.
Tim took in her appearance, or at the least the part of the face which was not covered by her masquerade mask, his eyes running over the exposed skin, her soft full lips, bleeding though a corner as if she’d taken a punch to it, then upwards to her button nose and finally, her eyes again.
Her eyes.
Her eyes, the deepest shade of brown, twinkling with the force of a thousand stars as the nightlight hit them. He had never, in his forty years of existence, seen a prettier sight. He would recount afterwards, years later, that this was probably the exact moment he was a goner.
However, at present time, the spell broke as soon as it came, as soon as the electricity came back on and her eyes turned away. Some sense knocked back into Tim’s head as he remembered he had a job to do.
“Hey, stop. This is LAPD and you’re under arrest for breaking and entering and assault.”
“It’s not breaking and entering if we’re not inside the building is it, blue-eyes?” Her voice carried a tone of mischief and playfulness, her eyes glittering, going from nervous to confident in a fraction of a second, her entire demeanour casual as if they were two strangers discussing the weather and he was not in fact in process of arresting her.
Tim looked around at her words, only realizing that they were now standing on the edge of the balcony of the building outside of it. The woman was caught in between him and the railing, with no way to escape. He shook his head, trying to clear of whatever daze she had pulled him into.
“You still broke into private property and committed assault on the watchman. I need to take you in custody. So why don’t you make it easy for for both us and come with me without putting up a fight?” Tim snapped harshly, as he remembered that this was a criminal in his hands.
“There’s nothing I would love more in the world than to make your job easy,” the mysterious woman in black mused, her posture somehow even more casual than before, “but where would be the fun in that?”
Tim gave up on trying to convince her and instead brought his other hand hear his duty belt to get out his cuffs when the woman suddenly slipped her foot between his legs and twisted her arm underneath him, and in one fluid movement, she broke free from his grip and ran towards the balcony only to stand on the edge of the thin railing turning to face him, her hand fiddling with it and her face still as self-assured and annoyingly arrogant.
“Ma’am, please do not jump.” Tim regained his balance and put his hands in a surrender motion as if trying to talk down a wild animal. “I understand-”
But before he had a chance to complete, the nonchalant smirk on the woman’s face widened into a full-face grin before she blew him a kiss and threw herself off the building backwards still facing him.
“No- ” Tim yelled, his service weapon dropping on the floor beneath him and he rushed to the ledge, leaning across it, his chest heaving only to find her hanging halfway from the top of the building attached to a harness around her waist looking up at him with a shit eating grin on her face.
“Until next time, handsome.” She mouthed, winking before climbing rest of the way down, detaching the harness from her body as her feet planted on the ground and all Tim could do was stare at her dumbly as she became one with the darkness again, dissapearing into the shadows from where she emerged from.
The door crashed behind him, his rookie running up to him panting, as Tim heard the wail of sirens from the ground.
“Did you see anyone, sir?” Aaron asked him, trying to catch in air, bent over himself with his hands on his knees.
Tim sighed deeply, his mouth forming into a scowl.
Yeah, he was not having a good day.