bakerstreet | YOU WANT, UH, A TISSUE? MAYBE SOME SOAP? NEW CLOTHES?

T-shirt on, and a round, perky ass. She's going to hell is what's happening here. A woman--a queen she'd been hired to protect, no less--was just attacked on her watch, and she's checking out the woman's ass. Horrible.

She's dropping her leather jacket over Charlotte's shoulder's next, then turning to catch the scarf Grey tosses before it flutters to the ground. Stupid man. How is a scrap of fabric supposed to suffice? That could be something she pulls off, but a queen? Queens aren't meant to walk around in scraps of fabric.

With a sigh, Zaira locks the stall door again, and begins fishing out dampened red hair from under her jacket and combing her fingers through it. Despite being cool to the touch, Charlotte's hair is surprisingly smooth. Thick, as well.

"Scarf or pants, signora?"

Charlotte glances back when Grey makes an appearance and her eyes land on the scarf. She looks at it for a moment, then tilts her head while she struggles her arms through the sleeves of the jacket.

"I can make the scarf work," she says with a small smile, directing a long wide eyed look at Zaira. "You've given me more than enough of your own clothes, darling."

She fishes the scar from her before those fingers start combing her hair and she wraps the fabric around her hips, turning it so that the knot she ties is on her hip instead of on her stomach or her back. She definitely doesn't want to be flashing her rear or her pubes to the crowd that no doubt has gathered to watch.

Zaira's fingers feel nice in her hair and she calms a little bit more when her hair is plated.

"We need to get my clothes and bag them. Find another place to trash them." She doesn't want anyone to trifle through these trashcans and find her clothes and take them home.

"Alright." Thank the universe. She'd really prefer to not run around with nothing but panties and a scarf to protect her ass. It's not the nakedness which bothers her, but the fact that she can't hold as many weapons.

It's with a curious eye that she glances down while Charlotte ties the scarf around her hips. It fits her snugly, but her jacket covers some of the queen's rump.

"Try to keep the jacket in one piece," she says, while her fingers drag through long, red, locks. They'd quick and efficient, looping chunk after chunk, gathering some of the lower pieces, until she's got the makings of a french braid. "It's a favorite."

She has no ties, so once the braiding is done, she wraps Charlotte's hair into a neat bun at the base of her neck, tugging out a pin from her own hair to try and hold it in place.

"Finished." It's the best they'll do. Hopefully the pin holds. "We should burn them. We'll worry about that after we get you out."

A plastic bag is provided by Grey who doesn't say anything before he turns the body around and leaves. Charlotte glances after him and then looks at Zaira over her shoulder. "He doesn't talk much, does he?"

Never mind that, she's getting her sea legs under her and this whole thing has the possibility to turn into a disaster if they don't make the right moves.

But first things first. She turns and takes Zaira's hand in hers, smiling warmly. "Thank you. I will take the best care of your jacket." She's grateful to say the least. "We'll figure out what to do with the clothes later. You're right. Right now we should get moving. I don't think we should take that plane. Not after what we've learned here."

She steps over the pile of bloody clothes and starts to gather them up carefully. She doesn't want to have any of it on her now. "Can you hold the bag open?"

A shoulder shrug. "Most people don't warrant the effort."

She's about to turn away and tend to the rest of their remaining tasks when, suddenly, there's fingers wrapping around her hand. Her eyes lift to meet Charlotte's, an unspoken question in her gaze. An itchiness skitters along her skin. The big cat inside her shifts restlessly, and for once, she agrees with it.

Nobody's held her hand in gratitude before.

She doesn't know what to do with that. Any of it. So, gently, she tugs her hand away after mumbling something incoherent.

"Definitely not the plane." The bag crinkles under her ministrations as she tugs it open. A chunk of hair falls from its hold and into her eyes as she thoughtfully regards the bloodied clothes. "We should find a more private means of travel for you. I don't think the trains will be a safe choice, either."

A memory flickers: cold, hard eyes; screaming; bodies ramming against a glass door...

"What does being royal offer in terms of travel?"

"I suppose there are cars," she suggests while stuffing those clothes into the bag. She goes to wash her hands after and pats them down with some paper towels.

She's still bare feet but it doesn't seem to bother her. When she straightens up, there's something shifting in her demeanour. She holds her chin up a little higher, her eyes calmer and mouth smiling just a little bit.

"Perhaps we should disappear. Find something less obvious and try the same route people do every day in their lives. Just travel incognito. A few of my guards and you two, we should be able to travel with much less trouble. Perhaps we'll take a car to Edinburgh and try from there."

"No dresses," she says, stepping up to tuck a flyaway behind the queen's ear. Then she catches herself and quickly steps back, turning to the sink and washing her hands off as well. It's easy to keep busy with the monotonous tasks. Tie the bag. Lift it up and throw it over her shoulder. Glance back at Charlotte. "Have you ever used a gun before?"

The shift in demeanor is a wonder to witness. It's one of those things she imagines is rare--to see someone so vulnerable and then don their armor.

"I think we should head back your place. Handle the clothing. Let things settle, since there will be people obviously concerned. Then we travel during the night." She pauses, digging into her back pocket to pull out an old cellular. "Limit the guards so we don't call attention to ourselves." Flipping it open, she angles the camera at the wall which Grey drew on and takes a photo, then pockets her phone and turns her full focus back on Charlotte.

"Numbers will either help or hurt us. Are you ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready." She smiles at the hair brushing but this time there's a patient, ever-enduring smile that doesn't have anything personal on it. She's already the queen and her life is not her own.

"I like your plan. Let's go with it," she decides and then aims for the door, stepping out of it with bare feet and head held high.

There's a crowd outside. People have gathered. She smiles at them and waves, then starts walking back towards the exit and her cars, the security surrounds her again while a ew of them is left behind to clean up with Grey.

Another weapon in an arsenal. They both have that in common, she thinks, inclining her head in acknowledgement, face carefully blank. The bag's left with Grey--funny how she trusts him enough to know what to do with the bloodied fabrics--and she's hoofing it after the queen and her entourage, with them, but not.

Her misgivings settle like a lump in her stomach. Taking the job, face associated with a high profile figure, as well as stepping back through the airport to return back to London. The crowd's already looking at her, studying her, pictures taken of the queen in her new garb; and with a sinking feeling, like each step tightening the noose around her neck, she realizes the ease of anonymity is over. In London, for the time being.

The walk back to the car is uneventful. The drive back is uneventful, though there was an accident which made them sit in traffic and had her twitching. Enclosed spaces, not a fan. It's not until they step out of the cars that there's a cry and a body barreling across the drive. A man. No--there's a second and third licking at the first's heels. A crazed look to him, to all of them. The way they run seems almost unnatural. Straight for the group.

"Stay down." Voice sharp, a quick glance spared to the queen, gun already drawn as she shoots the two flanking the man. Bang, bang, the guards are moving, their own guns drawn and firing, sloppily aimed bullets piercing bodies. The two drop. The first staggers. She's sprinting forward and slide tackles him, spinning up and straddling him, one hand around his throat, constricting around his windpipe. "Who are you?"

"And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you, / And he'll beat you into pap, / And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you, / Every morsel snap, snap, snap!"

She's given a pair of pants in the car and the security guards look elsewhere while she weasels her hips into them. This is nothing new to them or her. She's been changing a few times in the car, surrounded by a wall of big bags. They all would die for her, she realises this and there's respect in what she does, making sure that she's worth all of their devotion.

They stop at the driveway and file out of the car. Only to see several people running at them. Charlotte doesn't see much more because she's shoved back into the car by two of her body guards and held there until the situation is under control.

Once she's allowed to get up again, there's only bodies on the ground and they're ushering her away.

"Zaira," she calls, pausing on the drive way. "I'd like to see you in my room." The security guards tap their foots so she lets them usher her away, hoping that they'll be able to discuss later. She wants to know what happened and how all this came to be. But she also needs to know what to pack for their trip to Edinburgh.

It's a dead end. He dies before she can choke a response out of him, one of the haphazard shots from the guards having pierced an artery.

It'll be a small chunk of time before she heads inside. Crime scene work isn't her forte--she makes the corpses, not figures out how they became corpses. Still, she looks the bodies over, texting Grey the images as well as a brief and curt message telling him to get his ass back now. Cleanup can handle the bathroom and the blood scene at the airport; she needs him here.

Fucking demons...

She shows up eventually, knocking on Charlotte's door once the guards move aside. There's spatters of blood speckled on her t-shirt and jeans. They made her rinse her boots off so she wouldn't track in blood, which are downstairs, drying, leaving her walking around in socks, because she's not going to shuffle around in slippers. Oh, and her weapons are downstairs.

"I'm a mercenary," she grumps in greeting, sparing the guards a disgruntled look. "You hired me. I'm not going to murder you."

"Please, excuse them," Charlotte says as she guides her to a chair in the overtly decorated sitting room. "They would like to protect me from everything. It's not allowed for anyone to carry weapons inside these walls." Except for her guards.

She has managed to change into something less haphazard and Zaira's jacket and t-shirt are folded neatly on top of the table. She wears a red pencil dress and a blue cardigan, pretty simple but she feels at home in these clothes. Her mother used to say that a princess doesn't wear trousers. She would like to disagree but not right now.

She serves Zaira a cup of tea from the set on the table. Apparently someone managed to make her a pot while the rest of the house was freaking over bodies.

"Please, take a seat."

Red's always been the color to catch her eye, unfortunately. There's just something about it that screams for attention. Bright and vibrant.

... Or maybe it's because it's the color of blood, and it makes her hungry on days when her guard is lowered and her stomach's rebelling. It's been hours now since she's eaten.

Clearing her throat, she settles in the chair, pointedly looking at Charlotte's face and not at the dress. "I get it. New face, not trusted." Her gaze drops to the cup of tea, which she's now regarding as if it's alien. "Is this what you do?" Play hostess while bodies are dropping outside? She hasn't even seen a tremor in the queen's hand.

Charlotte picked the dress simply because she knows it looks good on her and she needed a little bit of an ego boost.

She looks up sharply when Zaira accuses her of being a hostess. There's something wounded in that gaze for a second or two before it hardens and she shakes her head.

"Unfortunately I can't afford to lose my head every time something happens. I have a country to run, and a lot of it happens with tea on the table, yes." Her voice sounds a bit clipped but she forces a smile. "I suppose I'm hopelessly British. A cuppa will fix quite a bit of troubles."

It does look good on her--that's the problem.

She catches that look, head tilting, brows furrowing just slightly in response. That's not... it catches her off guard. Leaves her mentally fumbling, looking away, outwardly frowning now. This right here? Sitting at a table, acting civilized, holding conversation? She doesn't know how to do it anymore.

For a brief moment, it makes her feel like a wild animal.

"Or weed," she mutters, pushing back up to her feet. The tea's ignored as she pulls her shirt from the neatly folded pile, tugging off her bloodied t-shirt, replacing it with the shirt she'd loaned to the queen. Flashing the queen in her sports bra isn't something she gives much thought.

"It's not a bad thing." Blue eyes shift back to Charlotte. "It's just different. Can we burn this?"

"It's what I do," Charlotte says sternly. She can't run, she can't hide, she can't fight. She's the crown, the head piece and that's her job. They will come at her with all their might and she must make other people fall for her and then be worth every lost life. It's not easy to justify that to yourself. But she tries.

She tries her damnest to be worth it.

"Yes, there's a waste basket, just throw it in, we'll have someone get rid of it."

She sighs, not looking away when Zaira flashes her with sport bra and everything. It's pretty cute.

"I will find you a room. And you can take a shower and change clothes before we leave. Is there something you need, something we need? I need to make arrangements to get everything in order."

Zaira drops the bloodied t-shirt into the basket, then drops back down into her seat. Elbows plop on the table as she reaches up to scrub at her eyes, then press the tips of her fingers to her temples. It's easy to tune out the rest of what's said--it's unimportant. The room, the shower. What do they need?

Her elbows slip off the table, and she's glancing down at her tea. Then slowly, hesitantly, she's lifting the cup from the saucer and taking a tentative sip. Flavor blooms on her tongue.

If this is what Charlotte does, then she'll do it. For now. Sit and be calm and drink some fucking tea.

"Practical clothes for you. No dresses, no heels. I need you in boots you can run in." She takes another sip and carefully sets the cup back in its place. Her tongue darts out to swipe the remnants of the tea from her lips. "Food that won't spoil. I need bullets. More than I've got."

Do they have time for making arrangements? There's a sense of urgency that's been making her stomach do that uncomfortable flip ever since they stepped foot in here.

"We need to be fast, piccola regina. Details of you leaving should only be shared with a trusted few."

"You said we will move when the night comes," Charlotte says as she walks to the door and brings in a man in normal clothes, none of the black suit bullshit that most of her guards are in. "This is agent Williams. He's going to come with us. If you tell her about your bullets and about the car and perhaps the food that he should be procuring for us. Then we can go see about those clothes."

Agent Williams bowed his head to the queen but she waved him in closer. "He's from MI6. If I can't trust them, I'm screwed."

Charlotte was used to feeling that she needed to move quickly or something would be completely ruined otherwise. But unfortunately she couldn't move the country around that quickly. She had gotten used to the idea that everything would work slowly. She'd have to wait other people to do things for her.

"I think we can just use my rooms," she murmured to herself as she moved again to talk with someone at the door.

That's the difference between them: Charlotte was used to things moving more slowly, and Zaira, if need be, was gone in the blink of an eye. There was nothing tethering her down anywhere, and if she needed to move, she moved.

"That was before you had guests on your lawn," she says, pushing up to her feet, watching Williams as he steps in. She doesn't reach out to shake his hand, doesn't smile, doesn't react, save for watching him with a certain level of wariness. This is a job, she has to remind herself, and the queen has her resources. It doesn't mean she has to be happy about those resources.

"Ideally, we'd keep it to one car. Two may be necessary, depending on how many men you're bringing." She's pulling on her jacket as she talks to Williams. "I have a contact. He'll get us out of the city undetected." Kadmus isn't going to be happy about involving MI6, considering how hard he works to keep his operations inconspicuous. "I'm planning for the worst during this trip, which means we get waylaid and will have to hoof it to Oslo."

"I understood this is an undercover operation and the queen only wanted me," Williams says with a small smile. He speaks with confidence, a full on secret agent, then.

Charlotte returns and he gives her a nod. "I'll handle these items. Meet me at the west gate once the light is out. I'll be waiting. The guard is informed of the situation, though, they don't know who they're letting out."

"Seems like a plan," Charlotte tells him and pats his shoulder. "We'll be there."

Then she looks at Zaira with raised brows. "Shall we?" she murmurs and guides her towards a hidden door at the end of the room. There's a small passage way that will lead to her room.

Boom, done. Relatively painless, no unnecessary questions, no need to negotiate or raise her voice. She's left a little confused as she meets the queen's look and follows her to the other side of the room. There's another surprise with the smaller passageway, but this is less so when she thinks about it further. Important people, secret escapes. No, not so surprising.

After they step out and into a new room--which looks like a personal space, automatically making her feel like she's intruding on something private--she speaks.

"When we headed to Siberia, demons sabotaged the train we traveled on." She watches Charlotte, leaning against the wall, out of the way. "Kadmus will help us get out of the city, but anything can happen on the road." And she means anything. "The airport could be just the start of what you'll see."

"I know. I'm ready," Charlotte says with a nod. She really needs to get to Oslo. This is important to her future plans and her future governing.

"Come help me pack," she says and nudges Zaira towards her bedroom and then a walk in closet there. Everything in the room is awfully big and fancy. She doesn't even notice that anymore. It's just how it goes. "I don't have a lot of practical clothes but I'm sure there's something in there."

She eyes Zaira for a moment, looking at her from top to bottom. "We're not so different in size. You could probably fit into my clothes if you want to change or something."

A little nudge shouldn't get her moving, but it does, and she's shuffling into the gargantuan closet, her gaze finally sweeping over everything. Of course it's big. She's a queen. Still, Zaira's never seen anything quite so extravagant before. Racks of dresses, shoes--so many shoes she has no idea how one single woman could possibly wear them all... and in so many colors. It's like a rainbow. "Do you have shoes for every day of the year?" she absently asks, genuinely curious as she fingers the strap of a teal colored heel.

"We'll have to find you some eventually. It's good to have." She doesn't realize she's thinking longer term, or that she may not be around longer term. The offer to borrow something has her glancing down at her own outfit. Right, there won't be time to stop by her flat to grab better gear. "Thank you. Let's get you settled, first."

It does take some time to weed through the dresses and get to the pants and tops. Layers are her aim, so she looks for tops in all sleeve lengths, sweaters, scarves, and pants--something a little thicker, sturdier, warmer for Oslo's temperatures. "Gloves. Have they ever taught you self defense?"

"I like shoes," Charlotte says with a small shrug. "They make me feel happy when I'm not." She doesn't mind Zaira ruffling through her closet. A lot of the clothes are for meetings and professional situations.

But there are some actually useful clothes. Not made with this situation in mind but they'll work.

She pulls out two old twill jackets she had for riding. Some boots that have been used for hunting before and trousers for the same purpose. A few really sturdy twill skirts and thick sweaters. Then come the leather gloves that are more warm than sturdy, soft leather with fur lining. Then she dives in further to pull out a box that she barely ever goes into. This box has a pile of jeans and other clothes. Like little tops and tiny skirts. Some pretty impressively slutty underwear.

She had a life before being a queen, okay.

"These might work," she says as she keeps piling them up on the floor. "Uh, I know how to shoot a riffle," she offers to the last question.

The brutal honesty is not something she expects. It stills her hand, has her sparing the queen a look. "I hope you don't have a pair for every day."

It's not a very elaborate thing to say. Not something fancy or witty, but it's genuine. Thinking about the happiness of another hasn't been something she's done in ages, but now that Charlotte's mentioned it, she can't help but wonder how often the queen isn't happy.

Zaira squats to watch what Charlotte pulls out, snorting quietly at the underwear. If the redhead looks up, however, she'll only see a carefully blank face. No visual reaction to those skimpy panties. Nope.

"If someone's attacking you and a gun's not already in your hand, it won't help. They'll already be on you by the time you pull it out, click off the safety, aim, and shoot."

She presses her palms to the floor and scoots closer. Closer enough to reach up and press her fingers lightly to a spot below Charlotte's ear, on her neck. "Your vagus nerve is here." She reaches with her other hand for Charlotte's, bringing the queen's fingers to the same spot on her own neck. "If you're close enough, aim a hit in this spot. A weaker hit will cause intense pain and muscle spasms. If you hit someone hard enough, you can knock them out."

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